At the end of 1981, The Self-Proclaimed Apostle told me that the Lord was telling me to start attending a snooty High Anglican Church. I obeyed, since I honestly believed that SPA did hear the voice of God and likely better than I could.
Snooty church was a life changing experience. The rector, or should I call him the Tyrannosaurus Rector, an absolute living fossil if one ever existed, told me that in order to receive communion I would have to be confirmed. I reluctantly accepted while fumbling my way through this very strange new world I was suddenly in. The family mass paled on me and I quit going after a few Sundays, but from my first experience of the high mass at snooty church I was hooked. I could not deny the deep and profound transcendent sense of God's presence which was strangely counterbalanced in the most counterintuitive fashion by the snooty uptight and highly neurasthenic precious and twee high Anglicans in this church. Their behaviour and attitudes were so out of step with the desperate poverty and social problems in the parish neighbourhood that I could not reconcile this with the sense of God's presence I inevitably experienced there day after day. They really seemed determined to maintain snooty church as a barricaded island fortress against the poverty and squalor at their doorstep. I became a vocal critic about this and did not win any friends.
The splendour of the high mass was something incredible and unmatched in my experience: this sublime combination of beautifully sung and intoned ancient hymns, anthems and chants by the semi-professional choir, the candles, the incense, the bells, the splendid glittering vestments of the clergy, the processions and the sheer grandeur of the worship space all melded together and we were all lifted into the glory of the courts of heaven. Even though snooty church had instituted a social service society as a neighbourhood outreach it always seemed clear that the local poor and dispossessed would be always treated like outsiders. When one of the priests gushed to me that here at snooty church the very poor and the very rich meet Christ together at the same altar to partake of the same sacrament I glibly replied "And that is the only place where they ever meet each other around here." He didn't dignify that with an answer.
I soon began to attend daily mass, mornings and evenings. I would walk every morning from my basement apartment for two and a half miles (or four kilometres) at just after six in the morning. If I left right at six I would arrive early in time for matins. I always seemed to have an experience of meeting Christ in the sacrament at the altar and this really did appear to strengthen and prepare me for the difficult and often challenging day's work ahead. We were invited for breakfast afterward in the rectory which seemed rather like an Edwardian museum. This was actually for me very helpful, given that it allowed me to become better acquainted with some of the snooty parishioners, to appreciate some of them as friends and develop a sense of community. It also allowed me to become much better acquainted with the clergy.
Meanwhile SPA seemed to inhabit me like an incubus. I began to talk like him and think like him. I gained weight and became nearly as fat as him. My hygiene and grooming went south and soon I was bathing only twice a week. Just like my guru and mentor, SPA.
The following year, 1983, I liberated myself from the Self-Proclaimed Apostle. I stood up to him, told him I would no longer be getting caught in his personal vortex. He sulked, held a grudge and didn't speak to me for a long time. I was jubilant.
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