Of Vicars and Castles

So apparently there’s been lots and lots of stuff going on over at the Facebook group that I started and subsequently may or may not have neglected. Here’s the schedule for the Youth Conference happening right after Lambeth finishes. Check it out, how cool is that!? Castles!!! Any of you who have met me more than once will, I’m positive, be able to imagine just how excited I am at the prospect of a castle! (Told you Sarah :-p.) Now if only I can find more secret passageways in Birks... Ooh, and my first Compline service too! At Canterbury Cathedral none the less... As you can tell, I’m starting to get a little bit excited :).

Tuesday 5th August:
Morning: Your Reflections with the Archbishop of Canterbury
Afternoon: Option of Seminar Sessions

Wednesday 6th August:
East Kent Pilgrimage (by coach), taking in: Richborough (Roman town); St Augustine’s Cross, Pegwell Bay; Reculver (Roman/Saxon); St Augustine’s Abbey/St Martin’s Church ('oldest in England'), Canterbury.
Buffet Supper at the end of the day by kind invitation of Bishop Stephen Venner, the Bishop in Canterbury.

Thursday 7th August
Trip to Dover Castle (by coach)
Buffet Supper at Cathedral followed by special Candle-Lit Pilgrimage around Cathedral, ending with Compline.

Friday 8th August
Breakfast and depart

Alright, now that that’s out of my system, and since the past few days have been rather slow and dreary and school work filled (I know.. School work in July! It’s an atrocity I tell you...), I’d like to devote this blog entry to my new positively-absolutely-favourite show on television. No, no, no, no, no, yes! You guessed it... The Vicar of Dibley! Tonight’s replayed episode was Geraldine’s second Christmas in the parish for which she was invited to share three rather large dinners with three rather, preternatural sets of individuals. Of course, hilarity ensued. I can’t think of any other show nowadays that can in fact make me Laugh Out Loud. And yet this does it. I mean really though, what could be funnier than a Church of England parish council... or any Parish Council for that matter?

Anyways, I think that’s about all I’ve got for tonight. Tomorrow we’re having our mini-Generation 2008 event at the church, all on youth leadership. Hehe, they put me in charge of the menu :). And then, I leave Monday night at 21:00. And so, if you’ve yet to catch a glimpse of the fantasticalness of The Vicar of Dibley, go watch it! You’ll be delighted to no end. And on that note,

Bless you all for watching... reading. :). Amen

The Night of the Day of the Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul

I have to say, there’s nothing that’s quite as refreshing as a barefoot walk in a thunderstorm followed by a warm shower and a full dish of freshly picked strawberries with good rainy day music playing in the background. I absolutely adore thunderstorms, a trait I like to think Benji (the shi-tzu) picked up from me. Every time he hears rain start to fall he’ll race to the back door and whine away until someone lets him out to run around the yard.

In other news, I got an e-mail today from Dave, the Steward’s Program coordinator. There still isn’t very much information to be had, but apparently because some of us will be “guarding” the doors to some of the discussions, we may actually get to sit in on them! (Of course, as mute observers I would assume, but still!) I also found out that there’ll be another Canadian there! Well, I’m not sure if he’s officially Canadian, but I think he’s studying at U of T. Either way, I’m excited. It looks like we’ve got a really neat group working in the Steward’s program. Drop by our Facebook group!

Well, in the interest of keeping this short, that’s all for tonight! Maybe I’ll actually send the link out to some people now. Have a good night all :).

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.

Two Weeks to Go!!

Welcome to my blog! I’m glad you’ve found your way here - Leave me comments and let me know who you are, I`m greatly indebted to you all for taking an interest, so Thank You! I`m Nick. I’ve been struggling over the past few weeks trying to come up with a creative way to explain the blog title; alas, it’s simply taking far too long and what I have to say sounds way to academic-like – that’s to say, not at all interesting! So here we go, my first post. And now, at long last, I can send everyone the long promised – (and of COURSE much anticipated!) EmptyMountainEchoes – Nick’s Lambeth blog url!

This evening we here in Montreal hosted the opening service of the Joint-Anglican-Lutheran-Worship-Conference:-Order-and-Chaos. It’s a long title, but certainly apropos (look at that French!) if you were there to see the break-dancing and hear the whistles and wash the numbers off your hands. It was an exciting event and I’m sure the conference will go quite well for the rest of the week. It’s in the Cathedral! How could it not :)?

Well, let me just say that, even if I don’t fully explain the blog title here, I think the theme of the conference certainly summarizes it well. The processes of life are in flux - constantly. Order and Chaos intertwine, they weave in and out of one another and out of this mixture comes creation. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.” (Genesis 1.1-3) Understanding that darkness as chaos, as it’s so often been defined before, we come to understand that even primordially, before anything in this universe, order came out of chaos (who said ex-nihilo was Biblical?). Just as order and chaos interrelate, so we too interrelate, and change, and move. ‘In God we live and move and have our being.’ We are not static, and neither is our church; we are constantly changing, breathing, inspiring, being inspired. God moves us where God will. It’s in this sense that we are empty. We are empty of an independent existence: independence of each other, of other traditions, of the world at large. That is to say, we are fundamentally connected and shaped by all of these; except, we take up Christ as our sure foundation, our cornerstone. Only in the living and active God are we at home, are we solid, and yet even there, God never stops moving: order… chaos… life goes on…

Peace and Blessings,
Nick.