them pain. The first set of parents approached the font and handed me their baby while holding their other toddler by the hand. Normally I never had any trouble with small babies, holding them very firmly in one arm the way we were taught to do, and pouring a small amount of tepid water on the forehead with the other hand. This baby, however, yelled bloody murder the moment I took him. I tried the usual technique: smile sweetly at the baby, speak as loudly as possible and give it back as swiftly as you can while not looking too relieved. Now it was his older brother’s turn, and I made the mistake of picking the child up, trying to handle him as one would an oversized infant. He screamed and struggled, delivering some very energetic kicks to my midsection. The entire group of little ones had now joined in and begun wailing loudly.
By the time I had fought my way through the entire batch, I was soaked, my preaching scarf was hanging askew, and my patience had almost given way to something else. I then needed to deliver the sermon, repeating the passages about childhood innocence I had so unsuspectingly prepared the night before.
Later that afternoon I was having a brief nap when I was awakened by a phone call from a woman I had never heard of or met asking whether she and her husband could have their baby “done” soon. In weariness I couldn’t help myself and said, “And how would you like it done, madam? Well, medium or rare?” She hung up at once.
Those who have read Water into Wine will know something of my own understanding of what baptism actually means and how it can be seen as so much more than a churchy ritual of convenience. Were I to be back in a parish today, I would present it quite differently than in that bygone era. One thing is certain: there would be a great deal less said about sin and much more about the acknowledgement of the presence of the divine spark in every newborn child of God.
Certainly the most sacred service for most Christians is the Eucharist, also known as the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion or Mass. The risks for clergy are many: losing one’s place in the prayer book, dropping the chalice, or running out of bread and wine. One morning at St. Anne’s Church in the heart of Toronto, I nearly electrocuted a parishioner. I had walked across the carpet of the chancel area several times and had unknowingly picked up an impressive charge of static electricity. I learned later that I should have discharged it by touching the metal radiator before handing the cup to anyone. Not knowing this, however, I blithely offered the cup to the first gentleman on his knees, and watched as a spark leapt between the cup and his lip. It was audible to the entire group kneeling at the altar rail, and badly frightened the poor man as well as myself.
One thing you are taught as an Anglican minister is that any bread or wine which has been consecrated for Holy Communion and has not been used must be consumed by the clergy at the close of the service. In order not to run out, I would frequently overestimate the size of the crowd and have quite a lot to deal with at the end. My father, when he had his own parish in his late-in-life career as an Anglican parish priest, had his own ideas about leftover bread: he would simply throw it out on the lawn for the birds well after the service, believing it did more good that way. Eating leftover bread or wafers is one thing, and can be at times an embarrassment, but drinking any remaining wine after the chalice has been passed around to two hundred or more people and contains small wet crumbs from the bread the communicants missed is enough to make a person gag. This practice is seldom thoroughly discussed or even mentioned anywhere. Fortunately for the clergy, the practice of drinking from the common cup has changed somewhat in this day and age of fears of pandemics, but it is still a contentious issue in some parishes.
Outwardly, it appeared at that time as if my parish career was proceeding just as it should. All the external marks of success were in place. St. Margaret’s-in-the-Pines was one of the few parishes in the diocese that had more men than women in the pews on any given Sunday morning. Inwardly, however, trouble was fermenting. Issues were arising, both theological and personal, that one day would have to be squarely faced.
Sometimes I am asked whether I would like to be back in a parish ministry today and, if so, what I would do differently. A full answer would again require a book-length treatise, but a few points can sketch at least a general direction. If possible, I would simultaneously have a teaching or writing post so that my preaching and teaching could be quite financially independent. Put bluntly, it’s very hard, if not impossible, to speak out freely from a pulpit when those who pay the bulk of your salary and the church maintenance fees are sitting in the front row each Sunday. I would also initiate a parallel church for agnostics, atheists and seekers of every kind. There would be no formal prayers, sermons or lectures at such a gathering. Rather, it would be a place and time for honest questioning and debate.
My understanding and experience of prayer have evolved gradually in the process of living in the real world and not that of the cloister or the seminary. Whereas, like most people, I once prayed as though God were indeed some super-parent in the sky with a switchboard dedicated to my plaintive demands, I slowly matured through various stages to a point where prayer is most often not verbalized at all. I still believe in clearly stating my fears, uncertainties and doubts as well as my joys and gratitude, either silently or aloud (when alone), because God is everywhere throughout the cosmos and we live constantly with that Presence about us and within. This wish to put things into words is not based on some assumption that my wants or joys are unknown to the Deity, but on my need to express them and on what this does for others and for me. I speak of what I know. Prayer has power, but according to universal spiritual laws, not because God needs to hear either our whimpering or our praise. The best prayer for me—and for millions around the world of all religions or of none—is that of pure silence. Sometimes one wants to meditate by using a simple mantra while calmly observing the breath moving in and out. At times I simply repeat a verse of Scripture or of sublime poetry. For example, the word Amen can itself become a mantra. Or the verse “We have not received the spirit of fear but of power, of love and of a sound mind.” In the end, I have found that I pray because I must express my thanks for being alive and all that means. We are wired to pray, but the puerile “bless me, bless me” days of one’s childhood need to disappear.
In the “parallel church” there might be readings, not just from Holy Scriptures (of various faiths) but from so-called secular writers, poets and journalists. The music would be as varied as the “congregation” decided. There would be a wide use of modern media in a spectrum of presentations—and always with time for feedback or discussion. When I was at St. Margaret’s, I wrote an entire Sunday school curriculum based upon a series of major films dramatizing the life of St. Paul. The teachers and children loved it. In parish ministry, as everywhere else in religion, it is time for some truly radical change.
Harvest home and Thanksgiving would not be the only occasions where our total dependency on and “interbeing” (to use a Buddhist term) with the whole of the natural world would be acknowledged and made the focus of prayer, readings and meditation. One thing I have learned from my own experience as well as from my research into pre-Christian or Pagan beliefs is the centrality of the Creation to a full and balanced spirituality. When the early Christians gained temporal power through the conversion of Emperor Constantine and then gradually proceeded to denigrate and destroy all that Paganism held dear, they turned away from the deep connection religion had always had with Mother Earth and the cycles of the cosmos at the same time. Literalism too played its part, as the whole myth about God cursing the earth and Adam’s destiny in it was read as a fact of history. Part of the vast environmental crisis we face right now is due to the Western world’s inheritance of an attitude towards nature of negativity and indifference. You can find it even in the hymns we sing in church. “Joy to the World,” one of the best-known of all Christmas carols, for example, in stanza three celebrates belief in the “Curse of Adam” upon what we call “the environment.” The verse says in part, “far as the curse is found,” and repeats it three times for emphasis. At best the natural world is regarded as there to be exploited and used as we see fit. All religions need to rediscover the reverence and awe that link us once again to the womb out of which we come and that nourishes our inner spirit as nothing else can.
On my eightieth
