It was the leader of this ersatz makeshift community mentioned in the previous post who told me that God was telling me to start going to a high Anglican church. I was twenty-five when I began to attend Snooty Church. The daily mass was helpful for my spiritual nourishment as well as establishing there a sense of community with others there, which is not exactly the same thing as actual community.
The cold cereal, toast and coffee we shared together in the clergy house every morning was a great way of coming together following the Eucharist. Some of us even became friends, after a fashion, though there still remained a certain distance that kept us from actually knowing and enjoying one another. So...Very...Anglican.
I became fond of some of them, as they did, apparently of me. I often wanted to reach across the divide. But not even kneeling together every morning before the same broken and bleeding Christ was enough to truly bond us. And the many profoundly poor street people who lived in the neighbourhood always seemed marginalized and shut out by the upper middle class parishioners of Snooty Church. They simply did not seem to like them much.
This often became for me frustrating, and lonely. I wanted to be close to people. I felt often such a strong love for people there, the upper middle class parishioners and the local poor, but also lacking in the skill, tact and patience involved in reaching across to some of them without alienating. I came to accept this, and at times I blundered horribly.
An evil priest, with backers, really upset the balance. Many were hurt by this morally bankrupt person, I among them. The Eucharist soon became more a cause of trauma than source of nourishment and comfort. The rector turned against me at this horrible man's bidding. I eventually had to leave, broken, homeless and exhausted. No one at Snooty Church offered me so much as a couch or even a garage to sleep in. I was forty-two then, just eighteen years ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment