Friday - Part 3

The disconnect in real time continues. It is now Tuesday, - and after a day that the other grandchildren and their parents routinely spend with me on Monday, life has calmed down again. After taking the car in to repair a missing headlight, it's quiet and time to finish Friday, -after all, it is more than a week since this journey started.

The midday Eucharist was originally to be celebrated by the Primate, Fred Hiltz, but he had to send his regrets when the Council of General Synod required him to make a presentation. Pinch hitting for him was Bishop Gordon Light, newly retired from the Diocese of the Central Interior, and now the Chaplain to the Staff at Church House, the Anglican National Office. It was a wonderful reunion for me personally, because I first met Gordon in 1963 when he was a keen guitar playing teenager, who performed what we thought was the Canadian Premiere of the American Folk Mass at All Saints Westboro in the Diocese of Ottawa, where my husband had just been appointed curate. I remember that my three year old could sing the entire Creed because of the catchy tune - and knowing my son Michael's musical memory, he probably still can. The other invention of Gordon and his banjo playing musical partner Don Manders was to set "The Lord's My Shepherd I'll not want" to the tune of "The Happy Wanderer" - and substitute - "He lives, He lives, He lives, I know that my Redeemer lives, He Lives, He Lives, He lives within my heart. You can hum along as you read this.

Gordon still plays the guitar and accompanied us on one of his own Hymns - "Draw the Circle Wider. We also sang " Ask or Imagine" and were reminded of his musical gifts to the whole church.

At the beginning of his homily, Gordon asked us to pray for his friend and fellow musician of the Common Cup Quartet, Jim Ulrich. Jim is in hospital seriously ill, and it reminds him of the precariousness of human life. Our individual lives, which seem so important are always on the edge of crumbling into nothing, but we are like the little thing he then showed us - a tiny sliver of hazelnut which is an image of God the creator, who made it loves it and looks after us. He also noted that he had retrieved it in the morning from his granola.

He then reminisced about something he noticed in the past in One Hundred Mile House in BC - the place resonated with me immediately because I have been there visiting one of my nieces. He took a walk "on the wild side" and noticed a broken chunk of asphalt in the driveway. Intrigued by what had caused it, - water?, a jack hammer? - he traced the source to a day lily that had poked a very determined head right through the cement. Life, he concluded, cannot be stopped. Dandelions and thistles have the same power. This provides the insight that one way or another, we will last.

Like Philip, we have trouble seeing it. Jesus reminded him, - "Who sees me, sees the Father. In a life that is also fragile, the Father gives us Jesus. All indeed shall be well.

After lunch, rain prevented a walk. I found a comfortable sofa in the sitting room just beside the guest house rear entry, stretched out and shut my eyes for about 15 minutes. While we had tried to be reasonable in planning the schedule, I was more than ready to agree that there was not enough time for rest and reflection. We moved back to the Chapel for 2:30 to hear Margaret's next address which was titled. "More than Homo Sapiens".

She started by asking us how far we had come in the journey of humanization. Her first story detailed the experience of an aboriginal Australian chief who died. His followers wanted him buried in the local Roman Catholic cemetery, but the priest refused, "spitting feathers" - this is a UK-ism that Margaret has taught us - and it is pretty self explanatory. The followers accepted the decision and buried their chief outside the fence of the cemetery - but they returned later in the night and moved the fence to include the new gravesite. Fences can always be moved to "draw the circle wider".

As she has done so well in her book, Root and Wings, Margaret took us through the journey when eons ago, man became bi-pedal and upright. Four year old Benjamin got it yesterday, when I talked to him about this and he said, "So then we got hands". Perhaps about 200,000 years ago our brains increased by three times in volume and landed us with the biggest cerebral cortex in the animal kingdom. As hunter/gatherers we had to learn collaboration to survive and started to enter relationship. It was the beginning of community but also opened up the shadow of individuality that sought to go its own way. We'd entered the doorway of the garden of the knowledge of good and evil.

Perhaps 40,000 years ago we entered the mystery of spiritual evolution - indigenous communities have always sensed it well and continue to challenge our own truncated sense of it.

Then about 4,000 years ago we entered the realm of religions and the prophets. Margaret noted that some of us are still stuck in their outdated cosmology where God is viewed as coming down or dropping in. The truth is that God has always been here, however aware or unaware we may be. Sometimes we fear whether another day will come. Her prescription when we feel this way is "Call Australia - because it is already another day there". Similarly we rejoice when the daffodils come again - as they are in Toronto now - even though they have come in England or BC several months ago, - conveniently forgetting that they have always been there. They are just being revealed in a new way. For the last 2,000 years we have been blessed with a sense of a new season of growth that emerges when the time is right. We might be still in the spiritual playpen, but we are given beatitudes, parables, pictures, powerful experiences of circles of friends.

So how is the human family actually doing? The invitation is "Follow me" - which suggests footprints. It might also suggest uncovering mystery, transparency and vulnerability and moving past the many spin doctors in our environment. It also suggests value shifts, - accepting failure and vulnerability, taking risks, accepting mystery, choosing service over control, interdependence over independence, wisdom over knowledge.

The resources for this journey come not only from the legacy of the Gospels,the Desert Fathers and Mothers and others throughout the ages, but they also come from the footprints of modern prophets and mystics of our own time like John Bell, who haven't yet eaten a Big Mac or owned an I-Pod. We also need to look at modern science where many thinkers are respecting the mystery of the universe by seeing the beauty in chaos theory and the sense of our earth as a living organism.

Margaret ended with the story of an African woman, who when asked how she would like to be remembered said that she wanted to be known for "Spending it All". This wasn't an attempt to avoid inheritance tax, but to use all the gifts and leave a footprint that points the way. We were then pointed toward our discussion group to ponder these things.

When we reassembled for Evening Prayer, we had a Taize service. It was greatly enhanced by the music of organist Dan Norman and Sr. Ann (Norman) - though they are not related and we were quickly able to join in the music by ear if our reading skills were deficient, as mine are. We were also offered an anointing for healing, which many of us took advantage of. Several of the sisters and associates are trained to offer this special ministry which is so welcome and needed.

After a silent supper, we reassembled in the refectory for an evening of entertainment. It soon became evident that we made a great choice in inviting Fr. Tim Elliot to be a combined entertainer and MC. Tim is a gifted jazz pianist as well as a parish priest and consultant and he uses all these gifts to draw people together. It wasn't long before he had us singing "Side by Side" - and in keys far friendlier to older voices than those of the soprano-challenged of the chapel services. Our pitch in the lower keys improved dramatically.

The programme proceeded with a presentation by the Sisters of the Life of the foundress of the order, Mother Hanna. Sister Elizabeth narrated and others took turns in reading excerpts from her life and diaries. They reminded us of the courage and hardships of this amazing woman and her early sisters in responding to calls for service. Mother Hanna's wry sense of humour obviously got her through many trials and tribulations, - and some of ours seem modest in comparison. I hope that these could be published so that all of you could share them. The presentation followed with a lovely meditative improvisation on the piano by an associate, which seemed to tie it together and provide a reflective segue to the rest of the entertainment.

And entertaining it was. My digital camera gave up the ghost at this point, but if you go to the convent website and go to the picture section for Day 4. You will see a nice picture of Tim at the piano on the SSJD website plus one of several the singing and dancing groups - beams of sunlight as I remember it, in their nice yellow T-Shirts. How did they ever round up enough in the same colour? They had been preceded by another one singing new words to the tune of "Jesus Loves Me" so we could all join in - and they had neat signs for SSJD and the keywords of the order which came up on cue in the front and back rows. Margaret then took centre stage with the reciting of the tale of Albert Ramsbottom in appropriate Midlands accent and then it was my group's turn.

As I announced to the crowd, this was a challenging group to work with because they didn't want to do anything when I announced the assignment on Wednesday morning. A couple of them had offered to sit and knit - so I had to go with that. They somewhat reluctantly agreed to do a kind of cat's cradle tossing wool back and forth - and I promised to write a few lines of doggerel that the crowd could sing while they watched them. It sounded pretty lame. But the two singing groups that preceded us sang so well that I invited them back to form a choir during the proceedings, which they were surprisingly willing to do. Tim was giving them a lead into the tune of On Top of Old Smokey and after failing to bring them in, they came in by themselves and sang a ballad of the Gathering. I was able to retreat to the piano and play along with Tim. You can see us doing so on the above link as well.

Other acts followed which showed imagination and style. There was an invitation to join in the dance of "He's got the Whole World in His Hands" - and we did. Etched in my memory is Sister Patricia, one of the planning group, singing and dancing her heart out - I suspect by now that she doesn't regret paying for it with sore knees the next day. Most of the participants - excellent women, as Barbara Pym would describe them - and sisters, associates and oblates, look alikes in their Tilley skirts which some days almost seemed like a uniform - danced and sang enthusiastically.

After an invitation from a lovely poem, Why Not Fly, we were treated to a video campfire. There had been some signs of life in the kitchen and what suddenly came out were S'Mores, a perfect ending to a joy filled and entertaining night. Apologies to those whose wonderful entertainment acts, I have forgotten to mention. Please add yours in the comments if I have neglected them.