Something Needs To Change...2

Something needs to change, and it starts with you. I have already mentioned that bit of graffiti I used to see on a wall on East Pender. A personal message, I took it as, because during that period in my life, much as now, I was quite preoccupied with personal change and transformation. how does change occur? Well, it does. It's always inevitable. Another question: how do we respond to change? A lot of variables here. As I am involved in that interesting liturgical catch-all, also known as the Anglican Church, which I have returned to following some very toxic experiences in some very toxic parishes, I will be focussing this post on Anglicans. There is that famous little in-joke: how many Anglicans does it take to change a lightbulb? None. The prefer the old one. Yes, Gentle Reader, they like the old one better, even if it's burnt-out, hasn't worked in years, and they're left reciting the liturgy in the dark. They like the old one better. Not true for all Anglicans, of course, and there will always be those Anglicans who embrace the new with absolutely no common sense or sense of theological proportion. I am thinking of my twenty year penance at St. James, the only high Anglican parish in Greater Vancouver. Well, it wasn't entirely bad, and there was the blessing of God's presence in many of the services, regardless of how rigid and inflexible and resistant to change many of the members. A lot has changed at St. James in recent years. The problematic members see to have all died off and are now enjoying their tea and crumpets and marmalade in the Great Jurassic Park in the Sky, and all reports I have heard indicate that things are really moving forward there. By the way that auspicious graffiti I just mentioned, I saw while I was attending St. James. People seemed particularly deaf to entreaties that more be done to welcome the local poor and indigent, since the church is situated smack dab in the middle of Vancouver's poorest postal code, the Downtown Eastside. A lot of the old saurians seemed to think that the St. James Social Services Society already covered their hienies and that all that was needing to be done for the poor was indeed being done, thus leaving everyone else off the hook while love to the loveless was being shown that they might lovely be. The local poor were often treated with indifferent hostility, and some members, especially one particularly disgraceful woman, would actually verbally abuse them for coming into the hall after high mass for free buns and marmalade, apparently reserved exclusively for the faithful. Neither I nor my partners in the Community of the Transfiguration, which I belonged to, made many friends there for trying to highlight this concern. But they didn't like change and they were bound and determined that everything in St. James remain just as it was back in the fourteenth century, even though St. James had only been around since 1881 and Anglo-Catholicism was even then a phenomenon less than forty years old! There was even an enormous fuss being made about installing a sound system with wall speakers so that people could actually hear the readings and the sermon. And it was the oldest and the deafest who were making the loudest fuss, not wanting the sacred walls of their blessed St. James (aesthetically, an incredibly beautiful space) desecrated by any presence of modern technology, not even if that technology was already a bit dated. That was nothing compared to the howls of protest about the impending apostasy coming, courtesy of the new Book of Alternative Services. They did not want their precious Book of Common Prayer replaced and even the special section in the new book that accommodated the dinosaurs was still a bit too suspiciously modern for some of them. I remember one lady in particular, now long deceased and sipping Earl Grey with the Archangel Gabriel, and likely from the finest bone china that England ever saw. She loudly declare that she would not accept any change in her beloved St. James, even if she had to fight. And fight she did. We were actually friends, and despite our huge differences we were really fond of each other. I remember seeing her often in the chapel in the back for weekday mass, her face radiant with the light of Christ, and that was a side to her that she didn't readily show, but that side was definitely part of the reality that was this interesting and complex woman. Still, someone with absolute zero tolerance for change. Even during breakfast following a weekday mass, I made the mistake of sitting in her chair. There was hell to pay. And when I legally changed my name, I didn't hear the end of it from her. She was kind enough to buy one of my hummingbird paintings, by the way. When she was writing the check, she could not bring herself to write my new, and legal name, so she asked me to write it in for her! As much as I honour the huge legacy that St. James has left me in terms of a rich and deepened spiritual life, I do feel a certain sadness, if a dry-eyed sadness, for all those people, like my stodgy friend there, who never could seem to welcome change as an opportunity, indeed, as an essential vector for the personal transformation that we all need to undergo and experience if we are to truly grow into the people that God calls us to be.