Civitas Sancti Tui

Lent 1 Evensong and Evilution 010309

Henry Scott Tukes paintings are full of vibrant colour as they depict the play of light on landscape and the human body. They are mostly painted in and around Falmouth and last year Falmouth Art gallery in concert with other galleries put on exhibitions.

In one of the main rooms in the gallery during this exhibition featuring Tukes work was a darker piece. At first I didn’t want to look at it with its dark brooding colours and from a distance it looked impenetrable. It was my wife who made me look again rather than return to the vibrant attractive Tuke paintings all painted before the First World War.

But as I looked more closely at the dark panels details emerged, these details were fragments of ordinary life, the smashed computer, the broken crockery, the teddy bear amongst scattered spoons, the broken 78 record semi covered by broken brick and corrugated iron.

It was the detail that drew me in, resonated with memory- memories relayed by relatives from two world wars- they spoke not of battles or great movements and meaning but vapour trails over south east England, or a broken leg as one emerged from the observer’s seat in a WW1 aircraft which had crashed into a railway embankment.
It’s in the details of life that joy and sorrow are experienced, the fractured frame or the fragrance of the rose, the sounds of a song.

These details were in this work by Roy Ray and the bigger picture emerged as each panel revealed through the details its ghastly meaning. Looking at the broken computers unleashed images of clerks and secretaries making the familiar sounds of tapping keys before bright screens as passenger aircraft ripped open walls and their lives.

We Christians are at the beginning of Lent, our major fasting season and season of preparation for Easter. Now we concentrate on details, fragments of life, what we eat and drink, service to the poor, the use of time. We are encouraged to understand that it is in the fragments and details of our lives that we truly see ourselves, we truly hear the judgements we make of neighbour, and we truly feel the need for our will to succeed. Jesus often talks of these details in simple terms- to whom did you give a cup of water? Who do you judge? Do you visit prisoners? Love your neighbour- the very person next to you; love even someone across a national or religious boundary like a Samaritan. It’s in the details that we know the reality of Jesus life in ours. As the tree is shaken what kind of fruit drops down? Roy's painting here in the Cathedral reminds us to keep on looking at the details of life, and from there to a bigger picture.

These panels show us the details of city life smashed. The city- places where most people live. The city, the place of abundance, art, life, security and future. Cities have resources and cities typify our human aspirations where no longer determined by soil and season alone we can explore other ways of being human. Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Parisians, Londoners, New Yorkers will all know this. For Jews and Christians this is all summed up in the city Jerusalem, as a metaphor, a hope an aspiration. In Roy’s painting the City, the place of hope and aspiration is pulled down fragmented by human violence and envy, by distorted religion feeding off of violence and poverty.

The destruction of the City doesn’t suddenly come from nowhere- it comes from the build up of detailed actions and thoughts. WW2 emerged from so many small factors including the 33% of the German people who marked with a pencil a cross on a piece of paper at an election. London’s bombing in 2005 was made up of detailed decisions and actions going back years.

But it is in the city where the details gather and finally pull down and break not just details but big pictures and patterns. The patterns of aspiration and hope, vision. The London bombings of 2005 shook our dreams of multiculturism and liberty, New York broke for a time the American ideals with Guantanamo Bay, the Blitz even led us to fire bomb Dresden with the loss of 30000 plus lives.

(Tuke painted before the cataclysm of WW1 Roy Ray born in 1936 inherits the memories and knows the broken dreams of the 20th Century. It was a stroke of genius to have his work alongside Tukes in Falmouth Art Gallery. It created an unexpected balance. )

On Good Friday a big picture is painted. The fragments and details come together in destroying through betrayal, politics, mis- aimed religion. The big picture and pattern which is destroyed is something thrown out of the city- without the City Wall. It is the life of the God bearing human Jesus of Nazareth. The hopes and aspirations of many hang broken and destroyed. All the details bubble and push until their final end is the death of beauty, mystery goodness and hope.

The Choir has sung about this- Salvator Mundi- O saviour of the World… Roy’s painting also points not directly to Christ on the Cross but upwards to how all the details make a bigger picture, how the details reveal both the effects of violence and the cause.

At the end of this service as we process out the choir are going to sing near Roy’s panels William Byrd’s Anthem: “Civitas sancti tui” by William Byrd.

Scholars suggest that Byrd was thinking metaphorically of the demise of the Catholic Church in England when he chose this text about the desolation of Jerusalem. His hopes and aspirations fallen, his life’s inspiration snuffed out.
The words are:

Civitas sancti tui facta est deserta.Sion deserta facta est,Jerusalem desolata est.
Your holy city has become a wilderness.Zion has become a wilderness,
Jerusalem has been made desolate.

As you hear these words, these fragments of sound you might like to pray for all who have lost their Jerusalems, their hope, their vision. You might like to consider as you look at Roy’s work the details of your life this Lent. You might like to trace how those details of belief and behaviour can lead to the destruction of beauty, love, hope in the body of Jesus Christ hung outside the City Wall.

Prayers. Artists, scientists, politicians, musicians. Cities, Ausw. Rick Rescorla RIP- Cornish who saved so many lives.

2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals, He will dwell with them, and they will be His peoples, and God Himself will be with them, 4 and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; death will be no more;; mourning, or crying, or pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” 5 And He who sits on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.”

The Rev'd. Canon Philip Lambert

Truro Cathedral, U.K.

The Changeling

The Changeling, the recent Clint Eastwood movie about social justice, has a line that Angelina Jolie (the Mum) tells her young son Walter: "Don't start a fight, but make sure you finish your fights." The real-life mum of the movie, Christine Collins, showed us the importance of not only feeling deeply, speaking up but and most importantly, taking action. She publicly criticized the LA Police Department about their policies. With good reason. Walter was missing; and for whom her search never stopped. Christine, herself, had been physically and psychologically abused by the system. If you disagreed with the police force, you stood a good chance of going missing or being locked up in a mental institution, or dead. She pursued her feelings and her criticism with action.

Part of my faith journey has included studying the history of the church, especially the Lutheran branch. I wanted to understand what it meant to be Lutheran. That's when I discovered the shadows of the Lutheran Church. Two large dark ones.

Martin Luther was an anti-semite. There is no question about this, one need simply read his words. He preached anti-semitism. Some historians trace Germany's anti-semitic roots to Luther.

The Lutheran Church, the official church of the Germany, yielded to Nazism. There is no question about this one either, one need only to read the biographies of Dietrich Boenhoffer.

Criticism in Germany was dangerous in the Thirties and Forties. It could cost you your life. The church took the easy road on this one. Certainly there was compassion for the plight of those who were persecuted by the political regimes. But compassion without action is pointless.

As we are learning from our indigenous people, apologies are the first step to healing centuries-old hurt. In my mind, Luther and his followers (and that includes me!) owe the Jewish population a long overdue apology. These shadows of the church (and not just the Lutheran branch) continue. Today’s discriminated social sector are those with non-conforming sexual identities. Today, we are oozing with compassion for the portion of the Anglican Worldwide Communion whose religious convictions preclude them from unconditional acceptance of the LGBT sector. Hence the continuing moratoria on making a decision about how we will include the ‘sexual niggers’ of our society.

In this time and place of our lives, we have the great ability to exercise our freedom of speech and voice our concerns. We have the freedom to question authority without risk. With this freedom comes responsibility. Criticism is a form of freedom of speech. With it comes a heightened responsibility. It requires self-questioning, removal of reactivity and compassion. If criticism does not walk hand-in-hand with this trio, we have meaningless, hurtful diatribe. However, without out action, thinking and feeling are the incense of Christian life; only a reminder of what we are called to do: love radically.

Think (critically), Feel (compassionately) and Act (love radically). Think of these as alchemical elements which need to be balanced to equal Life.

Criticism is not just bad. Compassion is not just good. Criticism without responsibility or purpose is as destructive as compassion without action. Christine Collins provides us with a simple piece of wisdom: “Don’t start a fight but make sure you finish your fights.” I might add: thoughtfully and compassionately.

Nicola Adair

Covenant

Forgive the adolescent opening – with a definition, as the cliché goes, from my Funk and Wagnall’s. A covenant, in its varied interpretations, is essentially an agreement, a contract, a compact between two or more parties. Lynn’s excellent homily of this past week examined, among other things the covenant between God and his people to never again destroy the earth by flood, in response to, in retribution for the actions of its occupants – however reprehensible. The ‘signature’ on this document, if you will, is the ‘bow’ in the sky, reassuringly appearing, as the clouds clear and the sun peaks through again to settle that bit of anxiety that percolates up in the psyche of the literalists among us. Lynn goes on to point out that this particular contract is as much a pledge given by God with no attached condition – as it is an agreement between. . . Sounds a bit like Grace to me.

As I attended to the rhythm of her text – as always accompanies a good homily in my experience – the linkages began to click and whir (again as usually accompanies) with the somewhat unexpected shunt to An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s diatribe on the earth’s (inevitable?) march toward global warming and all the attendant fallout. In particular, the graphic projections came to mind of what parts of the planet might look like 50 or 100 years hence. Namely that what is now heavily inhabited ‘land’ would have morphed into sea bottom. ‘Free-associative thinking’ being what it is, next stop was a recent Globe & Mail piece on computer modeled predictions of the disappearance of the Antarctic ice shelf with its kilometers-thick mass relentlessly dissolving and pumping up sea levels. And I started to wonder a bit about said covenant.

Pledge or contract, these ‘arrangements’, at least in the human world, have both a need to be revisited and renewed from time to time – boasting a distinct shelf-life as it were. Granted, such mortal agreements generally have a term attached – but even those so-called open-ended deals (pension plans, pledges of undying love, you name it) seem to have a way of yellowing around the edges after a while and slipping into the nether world of ‘that was then; this is now’. And I began to speculate if global warming was not, in some way, Gods serving notice that the terms of his covenant were in need of ‘renegotiation’. Just that little tickler that “I know what I said, but things have changed – and it’s not pretty”.

Now I’m all in favour of Grace. A pretty good deal: behave as you will, deny as you might, diminish for that four score and ten – and, with God’s grace, all is forgiven. (In passing, for those of you who haven’t seen the new Brideshead Revisited, there’s a great scene wherein the dissenting dad, on his death bed, does a little gestural recant of his ill-spent ways and, presto, the family is reassured of his future, post-mortal coil existence, as it were. Good ol’ Grace!) But being in favour of something and adopting it as the moral instruction manual for structuring one’s life decisions are two pretty different issues. In my world, contracts are a two-way deal. It may feel like it’s management piping the tune and we poor workers have no choice but to comply or else. But contracts are a binding agreement that obligates both parties to fulfill certain conditions. I work for 40 hours; you pay me an agreed upon rate. I die prematurely; and you agree to continue to provide pension coverage for my surviving partner. And so on. And further, we typically have input into the terms and conditions that comprise the contract. Put more succinctly, there is a mutual responsibility that attaches. No free (Grace-driven) lunches!

So what of God’s pledge? As Lynn indicated, the world is a much-changed place. Our capacity to wreak havoc and ruin is much-amplified from those days some 600 years BCE. And what’s that (schmaltzy) line from Spiderman: “With great power comes great responsibility”. So maybe it’s time to start mutualizing things a bit – and to lean a little less heavily on the ‘management’ obligation to keep a finger in the dike or to turn off the celestial faucet before we hit the 40 day mark. Maybe it’s time for the worker contingent to flesh out its side of the contract a bit more fully.

A year of so ago Nicola had researched a unique spin on stewardship as part of her then involvement in that ministry, creatively coined Green Stewardship – and somewhat confusingly and distressingly, had the ideas marginalized as ‘flavour of the month’. Undaunted she continued to assemble reference material, much of it originating from Earth Ministry and distilled into a succinct manual of parishioner responsibility entitled: “Greening Congregations Handbook”. (The website for those interested in looking a bit further is www.earthministry.org. ) In keeping with the stimulus for today’s blog, reprinted in this handbook is a speech given by Bruce Babbitt, former Arizona governor and environmental activist, “Between the Flood and the Rainbow”, which too is worth perusing – when speculating about our side of the deal (online at http://www.fs.fed.us/eco/eco-watch/ew951218.htm. ) So next time the clouds break and the bow appears, enjoy the show. But I’d wager that little tickle in the gut is as much one of felt responsibility as it is relief that the pledge is still good.

David Howard

The Christian Church and The Titanic

This is going to take awhile: I suggest, if you are up to the task of reading this tome, that you pour yourself a triple dram of your favourite Friday night single malt first. I’ll take mine neat, thank you.

Given the recent round of discussion, for me, this must be how Sister Wendy would feel if she were handed the keys to the Louvre: what thoughtful and thought-provoking discussion! Thank you, fellow catacombites for an abundance of food for thought. My head is spinning with the stimulation:

Leader vs. intermediary;
altar of worship vs. common table;
God in our midst vs. God in the East ;
Jenny Geddes alleged cry;
and deck chairs on the Titanic with poetry by Yeats:
this is a feast of serious thinking!
There are enough separate discussion threads to keep us going for a year.

The ‘deck chairs on the Titanic’ metaphor is the one that keeps popping up the most in my head. Obviously, the Church as ship is an ancient symbol; the word nave points this out. The last twenty-five years in the Church has felt like we’ve missed the signal about the approaching iceberg. Moving around altars and renaming them does seem quite akin to the aforementioned metaphor. But when I think about it more, it is not just the last twenty-five that have triggered the impending doom: I vote for the last two thousand years.

For me, it is quite confusing and has had me questioning how we worship God (modern or traditional approach, you choose). The Christian liturgy is the public worship of God by the people that has emerged through two millennia of political, social and theological evolution. If I wait until Sunday to have the presence of God symbolically represented to me by an altar position or priest position, I fear that I have lost much in my daily struggle to have a relationship with God. My private worship and relationship with God is an everyday responsibility.

The sacrament of the Eucharist is not God-worship, but Jesus-remembrance for me. Jesus went into the garden to work on his relationship with God; he went into the synagogue to study, teach and worship God. Not for one minute or a great bottle of single malt could you convince me that the position of the altar or the like would matter to Jesus or God.

So, before I look for a life boat or ask for the last dance on the Titanic or the altar to be moved or renamed, this question keeps nagging away in my head: can we save the ship?

Put that question on hold for just a minute though; let me tell you about chapel this Wednesday.

At the heart of St. James’ is the Lady Chapel. It is for me a little and barely-noticed jewel through which life at St. James’ flows. Every Sunday, the community passes through it; rarely pausing to breathe in the special quality that pervades the room. During the week, it is used as the short-cut to sanctuary. People tramp through it; every so often, someone will make a quick nod at the altar as they scurry along. It is on Wednesday morning that this room glows. 10 a.m., to be exact.

The paint is peeling off the walls in certain areas; the carpet is worn. Usually, the chapel chairs are helter-skelter. Many times, tired floral arrangements from the previous Sunday service quietly count their days in the corners. The altar is planted against the north wall.

A small, fairly consistent group of us gather each Wednesday. We wait quietly for the officiant to arrive; rarely is there chatter of any sort. We always start at page 67 in the BCP. There is always the epistle and the gospel; there is never a homily. We always kneel at the same points in the service. Very rarely does the presiding priest stray from the course that is hundreds of years old. Each week, we are reminded of the essential elements of the Christian life.

Because the service is always the same, I don’t really use the book. For extended passages of recitation, it is open for reference. I can focus on the why’s instead of the how’s of worship. Stopping my mid-week life to do so is not very easy for me. It would be far simpler to recite a prayer at home at 10 o’clock on Wednesday morning and get on with the have-to’s. But having observed mid-week chapel now for two years, I find it disturbing to miss it. Rather, my soul finds it disturbing to miss it.

In its quiet, contemplative way, Wednesday chapel dusts of my worries, sets me up straight and sends me back out into the world with a gentle nudge, ready to start all over again.

This Wednesday, Malcolm Wilson presided. We weren’t sure who to expect as it was not printed in the bulletin. Malcolm opens the sacristry doors and enters the chapel. He stops and lovingly looks at each one of us and greets us with a warm “Good Morning, everyone”.

Malcolm does not really preside. He speaks for us, not at us. He kneels when we kneel, he faces the altar as we do. He offers the words of absolution to us as though they were being offered to him. He invites us to read passages along with him that normally we are excluded from. He is amongst us, not above us. He does so not from a physical position; he does it in spirit. Malcolm’s authenticity, reverence and humility elevates the service to the most meaningful level. When the service is finished, we all sit in silence. There is no urgency to speak, to move, to get on with life. It is as though we have had a small slice of the peace that passes understanding; we don’t really want it to end.

Not many Wednesday chapel services feel this powerful, but when it does happen it is the most amazing tonic for the spirit and soul. Back to my question: can we save the ship?

The Titanic metaphor comes back to mind. The Christian church is very comparable to this famous ship: a huge vessel that seems unsinkable, carrying confident but oblivious passengers. A vehicle so large that it cannot react quickly enough to change its course to avoid destruction. The comparisons seems to go on. Let us not forget E.J. Pratt’s poem Titanic and its epic portrayal of hubris. There was nothing structurally wrong with the Titanic. The hubris of the people sank it. In the Christian church’s case, it has been sinking for nearly 2000 years.

Got that bottle of exquisite single malt handy: I would wager that Jesus never intended that there be a Vatican or a Canterbury, a pope, an archbishop, a diocesan appropriation that is sinking small parishs, an altar of worship or a common table/altar. He pointed out the slavery of the 613 Mosaic laws; he came that we might have life more abundantly. And, we, his disciples, took the 613 Jewish laws (this spreadsheet http://www.bendavidmjc.org/The%20613%20Mosaic%20Laws.pdf is available online and is a helpful outline ) and created an equivalent number for Christian liturgy and denominational dogma. Jesus pointed the way to God; not to himself. He taught that life is about paradox: The Beatitudes; he taught that love had to be radical ; he lived with authenticity, reverence and humility.

It has taken 2000 years but I wonder if the ultimate Christian metaphor may be unfolding. The Church will have to die before it can live again. No amount of shuffling of furniture, or glitzy signage, or dumbing down of the language, or sparkles of vibrant liturgy is going to get this ship out of the way of the iceberg of reality.

I can’t save the ship alone. My generation could maybe save her; I'm not sure what it would take to light a fire under the adherents. It is mind-boggling to imagine what it would take to usurp the political armour that her leadership have built around them and their systems. Perhaps miraculous radical love and action? Reminds a bit of this ancient story of a young rabbi...

I'm ready for a refill; are you?

Nicola Adair

Evolution and the Ideomorph

What better forum than the Catacombs of St. James to discuss the niceties of Darwinian theory. Margaret Wente seemed to stir up a more potent than usual wasps’ nest this past week with her commentary on evolutionary psychology and the ongoing debate of whether we’ve pretty much arrived (the ‘as good as it gets’ view) – or are still not only continuing to evolve, but at an accelerated rate. Responses, mostly rather unflattering (but then her skin has also ‘evolved’ to lizarderm status, as it were), populated the op-ed pages of the Globe this weekend. Briefly, evolutionary psychology applies C.D.’s main thesis – that, pairing of stronger, more viable, and hence sustainable matches, over time produce a more dominant genetic line that will survive and thrive, while weaker, more ‘flawed’ pairs will gradually drop out of the mix – to social selection. Smart, accomplished folk who pair up with others of similar endowment and drive are in effect propagating that ‘line’; and you can fill in the other half of the equation.

This exchange of view was perched atop an equally ‘stimulating’ piece citing this same theory as an element underpinning the gender-wage gap in our culture. Feminists are fond of pointing rather exclusively to the ‘glass ceiling’ that exists for women. The ‘enlightened’, young (female) psychologist / columnist was suggesting that accomplished women actually select themselves out of the wage market (taking with them their significant incomes and abilities, thereby dragging down not only the ‘female average earnings’ but also removing a particularly promising group of employed and employable folk) by choosing as partners, males like unto themselves: bright, upwardly mobile, high achieving, etc., etc… In short, this process of modified ‘natural selection’ (to attach the usual Darwinian terminology) skews the number of top female candidates, leaving the males in play.

To illustrate her point, she cites the case of Michelle and Barack Obama. A mere three years before his election, Michelle was reportedly earning in the $300,000 (USD) range annually. Expected 2009 income: $0. The implication of course is that the Obama’s are representative of a significant group of similar couples, all studiously engaged in the process of pulling the female earning potential out of the market, leaving their male counterparts to boost the average male numbers. Maybe yes; maybe no. Unfortunately the theory is, how shall I put this, yet to be tested. While not a devil’s ‘advocate’ per se, I’m at least a promising protégé.

An occurrence that old Charles D seemed to struggle to account for was not only the appearance of but the apparent thriving of anomalies – those quirky right turns in the methodical, relentless march of evolution from which sprang, quite suddenly, spontaneously, and without apparent genetic forebears, completely new (and sometimes desirable) directions, homo erectus being a prime example. The fossil record, after several millennia of plod along one, well worn trail, seemed to lurch (in evolutionary terms) rather abruptly along a new path. I would maintain that the Obama ‘match’ might better be viewed as one of those desirable hiccups and far from sufficiently representative to account for anything as far reaching and ubiquitous as the wage gap across genders. I’d put Mr. Obama himself (perhaps prematurely – hopefully not) in the category of the Winston Churchill’s, the Lester B. Pearson’s, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s, the JFK’s – politicians to be sure; but certainly not leaders born out of the existing genetic political pool, nor the ‘expected’ progeny of the existing ‘political parentage’. I’m not sure if the term in the title is original (I highly doubt it) – but it certainly works in just these situations. The aforementioned are ideomorphs, one-offs as it were, unique forms (to consider the etymology of my makey-uppy term) that pop out of centre field (if the metaphors may be mixed) and not from the predominant, primordial ooze of the political landscape.

Nicola and I got to discussing, at the same breakfast time ‘round table’, just such anomalies in the slightly lowered profiles of our own families; triggered in no small measure by content of an extended family history, provided Nicola some ten years ago and detailing three centuries of paternal genealogy and more particularly some of the extended writings of a grandfather. Her mother is fond of saying: “just where did you come from?” – reference the values, style, integrity, attention to detail, and so on that not only characterize her daughter (and make her, I believe in mother’s view, something of a rebellious handful) , but set her at some considerable distance from the value systems detailed in a family history of high-achieving, but decidedly ethically challenged progenitors.

I, like most borne out of a scientific training, subscribe quite heartily to Darwinian ideas. Creationist science is not only deemed bunkum, but is positively oxymoronic – with the emphasis on the final three syllables. I am left, nonetheless, in some awe of individuals that strike a unique path, that eschew the proscribed direction – whether it be swinging from trees with a penchant for walking on one’s knuckles or simply donning the party (be it political or familial) colours and espousing the expected and predictable rhetoric. In a tradition within our household, certain festivals and other ‘Hallmark days’ are marked with homage paid each other, most often in form of a haiku. Following is a variation on just such an acknowledgment of the ‘ideomorph’ I am honoured to be partnered with:

Culvert cultivar;
One’s weed, one’s wonder –
Uncommonly principled.

Psyguy

Captain Karma Comes A Callin'

A wise friend (and, for all I know, avid Jim Croce fan) once paraphrased those words to live by: “ya don’t tug on Superman’s cape, ya don’t spit into the wind, ya don’t tug the mask off that ol’ Lone Ranger, and . . .” with his own caution. “Always answer the door when Captain Karma comes a callin’.” Easier said than done. What’s this guy look like? How do I know it’s not just another JW in a fancy cape. If I open the door to another bag of stale chips or almond chocolate bars, I think I’ll explode. If I had a swimming pool that needed cleaning, I’ll sure call you first. Sorry, no tax receipt, no ticky. In short, we’re pretty much conditioned to slam that door in the face of just about anybody that rings the bell.

And so as I fired up the snow blower on what, to all appearances was not a particularly auspicious, winter morning, I was not really prepared to entertain such a guest. Two, three inches at most; should be able to blast through this in top gear and get in before the coffee cools. Driveway, done. City walkway – all the way to the corner (self-absorbed slugs who drop their citizenly duty, take note), done. A little polish off of our own sidewalk . . . Oops, just about dropped the ball on that one! Toss the newspaper safely out of the way onto the front porch; mark that extension cord, frozen in place ‘til Spring – and WHANG!

Blue smoke, usually the exclusive province of the machine itself, redoubled as its owner added to the column. Nothing stops a blower in its tracks like a good, hefty, mid-week edition of the Globe & Mail. Momentarily at a loss, I poke my head around to the business end and confirm that, yep, a little tattered and twisted but otherwise wedged in tact was Wednesday’s best (bearing out my fear that I’d carefully rescued yesterday’s paper) mid-maw as it were.

Years of anger management (teaching, not taking – thank you very much!) reminded me to belly breathe, hit the ‘pause button’ (as if that would get the *&%@! Globe out of the blower!), put an optimistic construction on events (‘could have been the extension cord’ seemed a bit limp at this point). And thus, as the mailman (and it was a man) strode up the driveway with his sunny greeting of how much he appreciated a clean path, I responded in kind with an “it’s the least I can do” – and went back to work with the sledge, crow bar, and sotto voce curses. It was some time before my mind (and the smoke) cleared sufficient to register that just maybe that wasn’t the mail man after all. Maybe that was CK in a mad bomber hat (the guy is a master of disguise).

Now the parallel tale, of course, is the Lenten theme at St. James this year. Let me get this right: something about consumerism, loving the planet, caring for our non-renewable resources. For some time, heeding the refrain that the church website is such a wonderful tool for communicating with the parish, for sharing life at St. James with those that can’t attend on a regular basis (Hmmm?), for keeping folks current with bulletin and community news, coming events and music lists (well, those will come, I just know it), the scribe and faithful sidekick have connived and plotted, pushed and (digitally) published this little vehicle in every way possible to save a tree here and a pinch of Xerox powder there. But alas, the drafts of drafts, the photocopies of photocopies, the pink, purple, and puce ‘eye catching inserts’, the printed reminders to check the website for details – just keep a rollin’ off the press. The direct emails, weekly updates, the attempts at ‘reverse marketing’ (“if you want to receive a hard copy of . . .”) have fallen on deaf ears. Ah, but Captain Karma hears!

Feeling ever the hypocrite, I recall my rants about inserts, flyers, ad mail, and unsolicited newsprint – dropped disdainfully into the recycle bin between the mail box and the house, unread, unwanted, resented; as I pull a shred of “Leafs lose another one” out of the blower’s rotors. As I untwist the plastic wrapper from the drive shaft, I cast mind back to the (now hollow) advocacy to ‘read online’; the barely controlled telephone exchanges with the London Free Press, censuring them for delivering ‘complimentary copies’ of their ‘illiterate rag’ to our house. Tentatively tweaking the clutch to expel the final few remnants of Rex’s column onto my neighbour’s snow bank, I shudder to remember the carefully lettered warnings taped to mail box cautioning anyone who might challenge to “save a tree – leave no junk mail here!”. How many times does the message need to be delivered? How much clearer can CK be? P-R-A-C-T-I-C-E W-H-A-T Y-O-U P-R-E-A-C-H. Come to think of it, that’s kinda catchy – even has that kind of churchy feel to it. Hmm. Wonder if there’s an application of that up on the hill. Or do we have to wait for a visit from CK? Wonder what the liturgical equivalent is of a Globe stuffed up your rotor?

David Howard

A Riddle For You

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