A Visit to SMM

One of the things that is really good about the Contemplative Eucharist is that it is worship that speaks strongly to the point that we never worship alone, but are always joined "by so great a cloud of witnesses." I remember friends from seminary for whom liturgy was reduced to a moment of lateral communion--the community gathered--and ignored the notion that liturgy is also about participating in something larger than our particular community or gathering. I think another baby sometimes thrown out with the bath water is the notion of the church as iconic of God's continuing presence. I suppose if my first point speaks to the notion of Church-as-temple, my second goes to Church-as-tabernacle--we need both.

An implication of this is that moving to chairs to be collegiate-style is all well and good, but I need to also create a sense of connection to something more transcendant. One of the parishes where I grew up, St. Alban's, Wichita, KS, created a very interesting installation that accomplishes this. I'll have to bring this up at Sunday's Advent decorations planning committee.

After celebrating the Contemplative Eucharist, I went to SMM for Edith Long's Requiem Mass. People were glad to see me and I them, but being there stirred up strong feelings. Some of those feelings are enjoyable and pleasant, but there is some sadness and pain there for me, too. I never managed to accomplish as much as I had hoped, and still feel like I let people down. I'm sure that if I told the SMM congregation that they would counter with the stuff I did which was of value, but I still can't help but think of the many different initiatives and changes that I was unable to get off the ground. Fundamentally, I thought my job was to create the change necessary for growth, but in reality my job was to maintain the status quo. I always felt caught between my call to build the kingdom and my obedience to doing what I was told. In that sense the Story of Fr. Tay at SMM probably says a great deal about this moment in that parish's history: the tension between two worlds.

Interestingly, I think this is why much of the preaching at SMM (mine and Fr. Harold's) often addressed the relationship between the Church/Christians and the world. Today Harold's sermon was tight, economic, and fat-free--six minutes that said exactly what needed to be said. And although the bulk of it was spent talking about Edith and her place in the SMM community, he did not neglect to mention how our view of death and the afterlife conflicts with that of our contemporary society. "Heaven," Harold preached, "is not sitting on a cloud eating Philadelphia Cream Cheese."



He's got a point, but I think the fact that we always seemed to be preaching about our place in post-Christian North American society shows that we never really resolved the fundamental problem that SMM faces--i.e. what do we have to say to downtown Toronto?

There is more I could say on the subject of what Anglo-Catholic evangelism could look like, but I'm afraid those ideas are echoes of a ministry fading into a mere two years of parish history. As much as I would like to offer my insight and help, it's time for me to move on. COTM is such fertile ground that, as ideas go, I could plant a pencil and it would grow. There are incredible resources here for transformative ministry--I just have to keep reminding myself that I've only been here for 2 1/2 months!

Stopped by John Hill's Church (St. Augustine of Canterbury) and dropped off the chairs we borrowed to show the congregation. I also picked up a few books from his (personal) library on church architecture. John is a local expert on liturgy and architecture, and I can foresee having many conversations about these matters soon. I knew a fair amount about this stuff before coming to COTM, but God knows I'm learning a lot more in a hurry! For instance, is the Great Litany a good choice to cover the action of asperging the congregation during the gathering rite? Answer: yes. In fact, the Lutherans suggest doing something quite similar to that in their new prayer book.

BTW, check out this cool font from The Cathedral of Our Saviour (Episcopal) in Philadelphia:

And of course they seat the people collegial style for the Liturgy of the Word.

-t