My day would begin at around 5:45 am. The clock radio, set to CBC Radio 2, would come on usually with some of the most outlandish or obscure new music or new wave seeping into my fading dream, just before the beginning of Stereo Morning, the early morning classical music program. Regardless the day of the week or the season or the weather I would walk two and a half miles to early mass at Snooty Church. The walks were always tranquil and meditative and during half the year rather dark. The houses were sleepy with no lights as I glided under the streetlights to church. Sometimes I arrived early, in time for Matins. It was a very special time. I was sometimes the first to arrive. I would be on my knees, eschewing the cushion in front of me and opting to kneel unprotected on the flagstones for a more authentic experience of humble submission before the Throne of Grace. I have since come to regret this ascetic indulgence and now before boarding the bus I often have to ask the driver to lower the stoop in deference to my mildly arthritic knees.
One of the clergy would come in, sombre in black cassock, and another, each kneeling in his particular corner of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel in the back part of the church. Rarely did other parishioners make it in time for Matins and the shared liturgy, readings, prayers and responses drew us into a mystic reverie, making us one with all the saints who had lived before us.
Matins lasted fifteen minutes followed by fifteen minutes of silence while I digested the words of the Te Deum Laudamus, the Benedictus and the recited psalm and scripture readings. The server was the only distraction to the stillness in the chapel as he came in and out setting up the altar. Mass began with generally a half dozen, often less, in attendance. Following the final blessing we continued to kneel in silent contemplation waiting for the server to snuff out the two altar candles.
We then filed to the back door of the clergy house where lived the rector and the two other priests, an elegant post Edwardian house attached to the church. We sat around the table for coffee, tea, cereal and toast. The jam was homemade by the housekeeper, an extremely unpleasant Ukrainian-Canadian woman in her fifties. She hated me and I have to confess that I have found her one of the most difficult people in my life to not detest. Just recently I learned that she received the New Westminster award, which is kind of like an Anglican version of the Order of Canada. What she did to deserve this, given all her surly rudeness, poor-bashing, and ill treatment of the neighbourhood poor will always be beyond me.
The conversation was generally polite and restrained but sometimes not. No one mentioned anything really about their personal experience of God during the Eucharist. Not done in Anglican circles, and don't even think it in High Anglican society. I gradually developed friendships with a circle of people, mostly older than me by a generation or more that had been previously closed to me: well-educated upper middle class Anglicans who seemed to respect and appreciate me, my fervent charismatic Christianity, my work with the aged and suffering and my desire for social justice. There were also clashes and I had little patience with brainless society matrons pretending they were attending a garden party for upper aristocracy when really at our doorstep languished all manner of human misery imaginable and unimaginable. One Saturday morning the rector asked one of the old dears about the state of her garden. She replied rhapsodizing about her early lilacs and rhododendrons. Following a brief silence I replied calmly "so much depends on early lilacs and rhododendrons." There was a prolonged silence, then I said, well we might consider just how significant your lovely garden might be to some of the local poor on our doorstep here (I have already said that Snooty Church was in the heart of the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, aka, the poorest postal code in Canada. The ultra conservative rector was particularly problematic, along with some of his handservants and handmaids but we did develop a mutual respect and even a mutual fondness, despite his flippant remarks about the antinuclear movement and unemployment and despite my at times following after him trying to yell some common sense into his little dinosaur-size brain.
I often walked home again after breakfast, after I was fired from my job, and would go back to sleep for two or three hours. Then I would have lunch, make coffee, and work on a batik. Sometimes friends would come by to visit, or I would visit them, or we would meet in coffee shops. Then I would walk downtown following supper, an early meal during the seven months I worked evenings as a market research interviewer. After work I would meet other friends in Benjamin's Café where we would chat and accept and hospitably entertain many local people at our table, some of them sex workers (of all genders), drug dealers, drag queens and rather regular folk as well. This was my ministry. I would later check out some of the bars and clubs, often just walking through them in silent prayer, sometimes stopping to talk to someone. We developed friendships and I simply offered what nonjudgmental support to those who sought me out. I was often the object of unwanted attention, but generally felt flattered while questioning the judgment of anyone who would find me appealing (Looking Better Every Beer?)
It was often past midnight when I got home. My cat would be there waiting for me. If it had been a particularly difficult day for me she would sit next to me on the armrest of the chair until she was assured I felt better. Such as the night I saw one poor fellow being beaten up in a parking lot. Someone was jumping up and down on his head. I tried to get staff in a local hotel to call police. They refused. I would be surprised if the poor bugger, likely victim of a drug deal gone sour, survived his beating, which was more likely an execution. Or when one sex worker I knew, a woman, told me she had just put a contract on the life of another sex worker I knew, a male, because being gay he was not inclined to reciprocate her love.
I would usually get to sleep by one or two, then wake up four hours later to the esoteric music on the radio and repeat the daily routine.
It was exhausting.
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