Life As Performance Art 103

I was mentioning to my parish priest that the Anglican Church is very delinquent when it comes to addressing poverty. They just don't seem to get it. Her response was to send me the link to the Third Order of St. Francis. THAT St. Francis. So, I looked at the website, and a lot of it looks very nice. All these well-incomed, well-fed, expensively-dressed and privileged Anglicans buying off their guilt and privilege by taking on a kind of sacred hobby. Third order basically means that you do not have to give up your comfort or privilege, you are not required to change your lifestyle, not even if you're obscenely wealthy, nor to make any sacrifices while salving your conscience with a pottage of noblesse oblige. The real St. Francis of Assisi, just like the real Jesus of Nazareth, would never be accepted as members, not in the Anglican Church, nor in the order that exists thanks to their respective and conjoined legacies. They would have been considered way too wild, and too full of the Holy Spirit. It would be like inviting a flaming torch into a barn full of perfectly dry hay bales. I know that I won't be welcome and for one simple reason. I am one of the authentic poor. Not a wannabe. I didn't choose to be poor. This for me is a default mode that I have done my due diligence to make work for me and provide me some way of witnessing faithfully to my Lord. The poor are still going to have to exist outside of the Third Order of St. Francis, Anglican brand, just as the poor can only exist outside of the Anglican Church of Canada. We are there, we exist, according to them, to consume their charity and help them feel better about themselves, and we must never presume that we are ever going to be really welcomed, taken seriously or integrated as full and functioning members. Our existence for them is something too threatening, too scary. You cannot expect to be considered for the Anglican Third Order of St. Francis without the advice and support of your spiritual director. In the Anglican Church you cannot get a spiritual director unless you pay for one. That's right, Gentle Reader. Once you are done choking and gagging on your granola and your free range eggs, do read on... Spiritual direction, for Anglicans is a paid-for consumer service. Not a ministry. There are no free spiritual directors in the Anglican Church. This is such an effective and nasty screening device. I cannot afford a spiritual director. And even if I could afford one I wouldn't buy this service because the things of God are not for sale. They are there freely for all of us who seek him with sincere and broken hearts. Unless we happen to be Anglicans. I neither could, nor would ever accept spiritual direction from someone expecting and accepting pay for it. This is not the way of Jesus. So, I will likely never find my way into the Anglican Third Order of anything, because I am poor. And because I have perhaps a few more ethical values than your average Anglican! Now, what if someone offered me spiritual direction free of charge? Would I accept? Maybe. But that might also depend on certain variables. I am constitutionally an anarchist. I do not believe in human authority (divine authority, yes, but that is a different kettle of black beans, and most if not all of those that presume to be vectors of divine authority are anything but). The spiritual direction would have to be, in my case, mutual and collaborative. We would be two disciples along the way, discerning together and helping each other to hear what God is saying, not to me, but to us. If that model exists in the Anglican Church, if anyone is willing to help make this a reality, then just maybe I might find myself in that kind of sacred relationship. But given how thoroughly corrupted Anglicanism is by class, wealth and secular power, my hopes are very slim. Anyone willing to take me on, for them it is going have to be with one big fat huge Caveat Emptor. At their own risk.