Post the Second!

Well, the Order and Chaos Conference is now officially over. I wasn’t there for the whole thing, but I did manage to catch bits and pieces of what was going on the days I worked there. This morning we went up to the top of the Mount Royal Cemetery to listen to the “People’s Gospel Choir of Montreal”. If anyone reading this was in Chicago with me in 2006, you know what it was like! Heck, the first song they sang was even “Sanctuary”. It brought back some good memories. Of course I was amazed to see Anglicans and Lutherans stomping their feet and raising their hands – a rare sight indeed! (I hear rumours the Montreal Anglican may have forthcoming photos! Any comments Harvey? :)).

All in all it was quite the exciting morning. It’s important to shake things up every once in a while. Anyone who knows me in a church context now will know that I’m quite enamoured with the Anglo-Catholic style worship (Big fan of thuribles, even though I don’t ever remember seeing one actually being used – I’ll have to fix that). I love the rich symbolism and the traditions that have been built up around these forms of worship. They have so much to offer if only we actually try to understand them! That’s the tricky part. Worship as I understand it is about engagement. It takes a lot to understand why we do the things we do, but once we enter into that place, we find a spirituality that has roots going back centuries, where each passing generation has added something and enhanced it in some way.

That being said, however, the fact remains that everything does inevitably change, and yet I’m convinced that this doesn’t need to be a frightening experience. When Jesus walked amongst the townspeople of an occupied province of the Roman Empire, he didn’t bring with him a new tradition, he reinvigorated an old one. He revitalized it. He sought the centre, the meaning of the sacrificial tradition and he tried to reintroduce people to the reasons for worship, and for compassion. Despite my love for the strong traditions that the Anglican Church maintains, I’m a firm believer that there comes a time when we need to let go of our traditions. When they cease to be relevant, when they cease to bring joy, when they cease to serve as forms of true worship that is conducted “in spirit and in truth”, they must be abandoned. What’s important is that they be replaced with something that serves to deepen our connection with God and to propel us further into the depths of the perpetual search for communion with God. It’s particularly essential in our present context that they not be replaced by forms of entertainment that render our experience of the divine passive and merely emotional. We don’t simply need more fun and excitement, we need purpose and we need meaning as well. When we find a form of worship that combines both, then we’re set. For this reason, I was overjoyed to be able to experience the People’s Gospel Choir this morning, although I have to say, tomorrow morning, I’m going back, quite happily and quite enthusiastically, to my beloved Anglican liturgy.

P.S. – I realize these are long posts. If you don’t feel like reading all this, take heart! I’m getting it all out of my system now so that by the time Lambeth rolls around I’ll have plenty of exciting adventures to tell of Bishops and Queens from far off lands (and kings and pawns and castles? That would be so cool!) and I’ll be so tired that I won’t be able to think half a minute to write anything at all resembling anything at all theoretical :). Thanks for dropping by!

Peace and Blessings,

Nick.