Only the top of an iceberg is visible above water; four fifths of it lurk beneath the water, ready to sink your boat. This reminds me that there is more to any situation than meets the eye. If I begin to think I understand what is going on in a Cree community, that is precisely the time when I must remind myself that I don't see more than a fraction of what is really happening.

Varying the comparison, cross-cultural communication can be like walking across a field of landmines: when you step on somebody's hidden fuse, the result can be explosive. Feelings have been hurt, and relationships damaged, by generations of abuse. With the best of intentions, a middle-aged white priest like myself can trigger irrational fears in my best friends.

Culture is like a pyramid: at the top are the "outward and visible signs" - ceremonies, rituals, customs. Beneath these, however, are more fundamental features of a culture, like language, arts and crafts. More fundamental still are the "deep structures": subconscious patterns of behaviour, relationship and communication, often unarticulated and taken for granted.

Ceremonies are the most vulnerable to suppression and loss. The pow-wow, the potlatch, the sweat lodge, the Sun dance, all these, at times, have been suppressed. Language and medicine have been eroded and hidden, but are not so immediately lost. Even those who have lost their language may still communicate in an "Indian way": for example, by not interrupting until the present speaker has finished, and taking turns to speak in the circle.

Nowhere is indigenous culture intact; yet the deep structures remain despite damage from several centuries of colonial contact. The most devastating form of damage comes from the residential school system, in which many vulnerable members of First Nations were victims of physical and sexual abuse.

Not all children were victimized in this way, and not all their teachers were scoundrels. The Anglican Council of Indigenous Peoples has acknowledged that many teachers were kindly and well motivated. However, even those children who did gain some benefit from their schooling were victims of cultural abuse. Even if they gained something from our culture, they lost much of their own culture, and their own family structure was damaged and distorted by their removal.

Healing happens in community, but so does damage and hurt. Family and community were given by God to pass on healthy relationships. But when these are damaged by sin, family and community are damaged and become the means of spreading the damage from one generation to another.

The abuse may be in the past, but the impact continues, a terrible legacy of damage done, not just to isolated individuals, but also to whole communities. This legacy is expressed in personal and communal dysfunction, for which the victim is often blamed.

According to the Gospel, when one of us suffers, we all suffer. We were all created by the same Creator and saved by the same saviour. We are all related. As the Anglican preacher and poet John Donne wrote, "No man is an island entire of himself." We are all part of the vast body of humanity. When my neighbour is hurt. I am hurt. When my neighbouring community is hurt, my community is hurt too. When one part of society is damaged, our whole country is damaged.

The legacy of abuse does not hurt just our First Nations - it hurts our whole nation. The damage done to our First Nations alienates us from one another, damaging our relationships with one another and with our Creator. We all need healing.

We are called to be partners with our Creator in helping one another.

This essay first appeared in the newsletter of the Henry Budd College for Ministry, The Pas, Manitoba, of which Canon Stewart is president.

Of my time at Celia Jeffrey School I clearly remember many nights I went to bed crying - lonely, afraid, and feeling no sense of security anymore because my parents, my friends were not there.

I also remember one day turning the water tap on and as it was running I poked my finger up into the faucet and wondered where all the water comes from. I was called into the office and told that I was not to do that. When I was caught speaking my language I was again called into the office and taught that my language was forbidden there. In my young mind I could not comprehend the rationale behind this. Why could I not be me, the person my parents had taught me to be? Why was being an Indian not important?

I remember a lot of shameful things that happened there to my friends. I became angry and my resentment built up to a point where I vowed that every white person would pay for this.

My self-esteem (spirit) became weak to a point of brokenness and I had to get away. I rebelled and ran away from that school with three other friends. We walked for two nights to Redditt without food. I remember walking by night and hiding by day, being very hungry and the lack of sleep overcame me. I remember falling down asleep and losing my friends.

When I awoke I felt I had no other alternative and went to the train station and hid in the dark. I sat there waiting, not caring where I would go or if I would die. This was the lowest point in my life. Imagine a boy of 11 wanting to die.

As I sat at the station in the dark a little dog came barking up to me and a white lady came upon me and said, "Can I help you?" I gave her a look that said, "Leave me alone." She pointed out to me where she lived and said I was welcome to come to her house. Later, my hunger got the best of me and I knocked on her door. She invited me in.

I entered her home reluctantly, ate a sandwich and went to bed. For two days I stayed with her, watching her knit and waiting for her son to come home from school to play. I couldn't figure out why she hadn't called the cops to take me back to the school. Finally, I asked her if she knew that I had run away from the Celia Jeffrey School. She said she knew that, but wanted to know why I had run away from the school.

Her "why" was the key word that has stayed with me to this day. It meant that another person (a white person) cared enough about me to ask. I said, "Your people are all mean" and she said, "No, not all of them." She said she would accompany me back to the school. And she did, she intervened for me and she spoke with the principal. I wasn't punished for running away.

She had instilled in me some sense of trust. From that day I tried to please within the system and hung in there to the end of the school year.

I returned home that summer and I asked: "Please Dad, don't send me back." My older brother, who had been to residential school, knew why I didn't want to go back and he spoke up for me and I was able to stay home and not return.

To this day I have not returned to school. I have always felt a lack of trust in these institutions. That year I returned to the land with my dad and lived my traditional way of life. I didn't speak English again until I was 25 years old. I became a leader in the community as a Councillor and as Chief. I have always strived to help young people, and to instill good values for a better life.

My calling to enter into the ministry came when I was 38 years old and it was at mother's urging, because of her dream. I studied and was ordained three years later, believing in my heart that I would be serving my native people.

My bishop came one day and asked me to speak in the churches in the southern part of the diocese. It was then that I discovered that I still carried resentment in my heart toward white people. I then had a dream and I heard, "God loves your people and he loves the others just as much."

I realized that I needed to deal with my anger and my resentment. I had to purge the seeds of anger that were planted in me at the residential school. I remember grieving, asking God to set aside my thoughts of revenge, to lead me, to guide me, to be the Lord of my life.

Two things that came to mind:

First, the woman in Redditt who cared for me and who had planted a good seed in my life, who showed me there is hope despite abuses and that we can respond to victims of residential schools with a compassionate and kind heart:

And secondly, the understanding that God loves each of us and that he wants us to come together to address past mistakes, right the wrongs. We cannot repeat these attitudes, and that it is a lesson to guide us to a brighter future.

I have had very mixed emotions coming here. One side of me was telling me to run. This is the first time I have met the people who ran the residential school of Celia Jeffrey School.

The other side of me said, it is time to come to meet you, to speak about hope, walking together, grieving and healing together, and journeying together toward wholeness.

I have come to say yes ... forgiveness leads us to peace within ourselves.

Forgiveness also teaches us to become peaceful. Forgiveness instills in us new hope a new sense of direction, a new sense of journeying together.

I have come, though it is hard, and often difficult. I want to forgive and continue to work with you in ways that will bring healing for both our nations.

I extend my hand to those who meant well and grieve today. Both of our people need healing. I extend my hand to you who are here so that we might journey together.

My hope is that we will journey together. Sometimes we struggle. By the grace of God and his son, we will overcome.

Adapted from an address by Bishop Gordon Beardy of Keewatin to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church.

In 1934, before her fifth birthday, Gladys Cook was taken from her home, as so many other children were, and sent to the residential school at Elkhorn, Man., where she was to spend 12 years, lose much of her culture, and be raped several times, the first time when she was 9 years old.

Eight years ago, at an Elkhorn school reunion, she came face-to-face with one of the men who had raped her ... and she forgave him.

Between the little girl sobbing on the blood-stained sheets, and the mature woman courageously extending a hand of forgiveness, lies a truly remarkable journey: marriage to an abusive, alcoholic man; a parting from him and work at menial jobs to support her children; confronting and struggling with alcohol; reconciliation, after almost two decades, with her husband (by then sober); and ultimately establishing, without formal training, a ground-breaking agency that would eventually become known as the National Native Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program.

While counselling Native people about alcohol and drug abuse, Gladys Cook became aware that many of them had been sexually abused as children. But she wasn't ready to deal with her own abuse, and so she turned many of them away.

It wasn't until 1988 - 40 years after she was first raped - that Cook sought therapy and began a process of healing. "It was like I'd been living in a deep dark hole," she recalls. "I went to hell and back so many times ... but every time I surfaced, I saw beauty.

"Through therapy, I began to see myself as a person. It made such a difference to me. And especially, it meant so much to my children. Before, I'd seen myself like a sergeant-major, raising them in the same kind of military style that I'd experienced in the school. Very quickly after I started therapy, I realized I didn't want that for them."

Gladys Cook has maintained a paradoxical relationship with the Anglican Church throughout her life. "It's very hard to connect God with anything that happened to me in residential school," she says. "My parents gave me the meaning of the Great Spirit, and I knew the Spirit was a support and comfort to me. The residential school's god was a mean and angry god.

"People say, 'The Anglican Church was so mean to you. Why do you keep coming back?' I tell them, 'I am the church.' But I've had lots of hate and anger inside me, and I don't want those things in my church. I have to help get rid of them."

A deeper exploration of native spiritual traditions has helped Cook reconcile traditional ways with a Christian faith. "Honesty and forgiveness are the two keys to my healing," she says. "Sometimes people say, 'I wish I had your calmness.' They don't know how hard I've worked at it."

Even to the point of taking the hand of a man who had raped her as a defenceless child and offering forgiveness. How is such forgiveness possible? Is it even desireable? Cook does not gloss over the effort it took her to reach out that day - so much so, that afterward, she had to be helped to her car. But she has no doubts that, for her, this was the right course.

"Immediately, I felt a new sense of freedom. I knew then that the Creator and I were walking hand in hand. But not just my Creator: everybody's Creator."

What problems are you likely to leave for me?

Here, based on my experiences, are some likely possibilities.

Did you have yourself on a pedestal? Have you made yourself the one and only connection between God and your congregation? If so, I will discover a group of lost sheep who believe that the world has come to an end with your departure, and who may be too upset, or too perfectionist, to get down seriously to finding your replacement. My first lesson to them will have to be that "the Holy Spirit can speak to you just as well as he can to me."

It is going to be harder on your congregation to deal with the grief of losing you if you have created a father/child relationship with them, rather than that of coach and team? Coaches, after all, are fired regularly while the team moves on. Fathers are unique. My job is to be a coach.

Did you think you were going to stay forever? Read through the Gospel of John, and you will be surprised to see that one-third of it (chapters 11 to 17) deals with Jesus preparing his disciples for the time when he would be gone. Similarly, that great missionary of the church, Saint Paul, rarely stayed to minister in one place, but moved from city to city founding new churches, handing them over quickly to local management, keeping in touch thereafter by prayer and correspondence. A sound church is one that keeps going even when its minister has moved on. No one is indispensable!

How orthodox was your worship? The interim minister is unwise to make changes in worship patterns. The permanent priest who will follow should do that. My first task will be to quickly find out how things are done, and to adapt, no matter how strange I may find this.

This calls for somewhat of a chameleon act, which is made more difficult the more unorthodox you were. I regard it as a duty to proceed very slowly in making any changes from your established routine. There are Anglican ways of doing things, and it is easier for us all if you keep to the middle of the road when it comes to liturgical practice.

What is the state of your office records and procedures and your parish finances? Fortunately, because I come half-time and am reasonably generous in my giving, I can be a lighter load on your weekly cash flow, and this is the difference between survival and disaster in a marginal situation.

A healthy parish is one where the congregation has a responsible attitude towards church finances, and members gear their offerings to the degree that the Lord has blessed them. Is there a realistic and current congregational list? Do you have a system for welcoming and incorporating new parishioners? Is your bulletin and/or church newspaper an attractive and effective means of communication? When did you last have a stewardship canvass? Do you have adequate rosters and training for sides persons, altar guild, readers, administrants and the like? Are you involving young people in all of these duties? If not, why not? Do services start on time? Is your preaching a faithful exposition of the Gospel story, connecting it to the circumstances of the congregation? If the answer to any of these questions is "no," then you have set me a pile of catching up to do, and I will find my job more difficult.

A congregation is a body, and a body has different parts. When I come to your parish, I will have a checklist that I use, centred on the letters of the word WORSHIP.

W: The backbone of any congregation is its common Worship. What services do you have? How are they attended? Do they satisfy congregational needs?

O: The limbs of a body are its means of Outreach. Do its feet travel to the places of need in the community? Are its arms effective in helping?

R: The digestive system of the body deals with Recruitment. People, like food, come into the body, are processed, and give the body energy and strength. How do we handle newcomers? What about teaching programs, Sunday schools and social activities to ground people, old and young, in Anglican faith and practice and make them feel at home in our church?

S: is for Spirituality, the lungs of the parish. Do you have some inner circle of prayer warriors, covering the activities and people of the parish with prayer, and looking for guidance on the programs it should follow? It makes a difference, and can be a wonderful ministry for those who, because of age or sickness, cannot participate in many other parish activities.

H: Housekeeping is the outer skin and appearance of your parish. What is the physical state of your buildings, furnishings and finances? The cleanliness and tidiness of your plant, including your washrooms? Do your corporation and vestry meetings effectively carry out the will of your congregation?

I: is for Intercommunication, your parish's nervous system. Do parish members have the opportunity to know each other? To know what's going on in the parish? In the diocese, national and world churches? Are they aware of each other's needs, and can they spot when a regular worshipper is missing from the congregation? Do you have a social time after services?

P: Pastoral ministry is the bloodstream and heart of your ministry. Are shut-ins and the sick visited, ministered to and prayed for? Is help available for those in spiritual, mental, emotional and economic distress? How serious is your preparation for baptism, marriage and funeral services?

If all the above matters have been well taken care of in your parish, you can be proud of yourself. It is likely also that it is time for you to move on to do more good work in some other deserving location. In such a case, it will be my pleasure to follow you - on an interim basis, of course. You will have made my work a delight

Anyone who has visited the Church of Melanesia in the Solomon Islands cannot fail to have noticed that religious life is flourishing. Today, when many religious communities are finding it hard to attract young vocations, the contrast one finds in Melanesia is remarkable.

There are four Anglican religious communities working in the Solomon Islands: the Melanesian Brotherhood, the Sisters of Melanesia, the Society of St. Francis and the Sisters of the Church. All these communities live under vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and all these communities are full of young people with far more applications than they are able to accept. It is true that this is partly because the religious communities provide education and opportunities which will take young people outside their home village or island and but there is more to it than that. Those who seek to join one of the religious communities know that it is not an easy option: it will involve discipline, motivation and self-sacrifice This is a serious commitment both to prayer and service.

The fact is that many have been inspired by the life of other brothers and sisters and the stories they have heard about these communities. Each village will talk with pride about any relation who has joined. These young people have a grace, which is unmistakable. They are greatly respected and yet have a simplicity and humility that reaches the hearts of all age groups. Their life has a spontaneity and joy very close to the song of the beatitudes. People sense that this is what the Christian church should be like.

These are the real evangelists: the good news people. This is not paper evangelism; this is not about lists, aims and procedures, budgets, modules, offices, committees and endless administration or 'super' evangelists and experts flown in from overseas. This is real evangelism that goes on largely unsung, unfinanced, undocumented. These evangelists walk the roads with bare feet and no money. These are evangelists whom people can welcome in their homes like returning sons or daughters, who will share whatever food there is and who will sleep on a mat and help hoe the garden, catch the fish or repair the roof. These are the evangelists who will come whenever they are called to pray for the sick, solve a village dispute, calm down a husband who is drunk. And when they visit, they bring a sense of goodness, the sense that something better is possible.

The Melanesian Brotherhood was founded by a remarkable man named Ini Kopuria, a Solomon Islander on the Island of Guadalcanal in 1900. After being educated at the Anglican church schools of Pamua and later in Norfolk Island he joined the British Protectorate's native armed police force. But in 1924, when he was recovering in hospital from a leg injury, he received an experience of Christ, which was to change his life. He believed that Christ spoke to him and told him that he was not doing the work that Christ wanted him to do. He began, with the encouragement of Bishop John Manwaring Steward, to realize God was calling him to start a community of native Solomon Island men who would take the Gospel of Christ to all who had not received it.

Much of the population of the Solomon Islands lived on remote islands, villages high up in the hills and bush or coastal villages with no easy access either by sea or land. Ini Kopuria believed the Gospel was for all people and just as he had visited remote villages as a policeman, now he would visit as a missionary. On St. Simon and St. Jude's day, October 28, 1925, he made his promises renouncing possessions, marriage and freedom of action. He gave away all his property and a large area of his family's land to the Brotherhood. The following year the first six brothers joined him.

The purpose of the Brotherhood was evangelistic: "To declare the way of Jesus Christ among the heathen." But as a Melanesian, Kopuria would evangelize in a Melanesian way. He sought not to draw the people away from their villages and communities but to take Christ to them. It was a community approach. The coming of Christ should not go hand in hand with the invasion of a foreign culture and individualistic concept of personal salvation without consideration for ones people. This was the kind of mission the first bishop and martyr of Melanesia, John Coleridge Patteson, had envisioned when, 50 years before, he had written that his aim was not to make English Christians in white men's clothes but Melanesian Christians.

The Melanesian Brotherhood did and continues to do just that. Arriving in often-hostile villages, they aimed to share the life of people in all things. There would be no forced conversion. It was not long before their reputation began to grow. These brothers were prepared to come and stay. They were not frightened of devils and ancestral spirits. Their prayers could drive away fear. People began to speak of their miracles of healing and signs they had witnessed and to say that the brothers, or Tasiu, as they became known in Mota language, had mana and spiritual power. The brothers converted many villages, but there were not always priests available to follow up this work of primary evangelism.

Today this community of the Melanesian Brotherhood is still very much loved and respected by the people. In a very real sense it belongs to them, to Melanesia. Ini Kopuria was a Melanesian of whom Melanesians are proud and in many of the villages throughout the Solomons you will find men who have been brothers in their youth and whose children have now become brothers. They receive three years training as novices before they are selected by the brothers for admission. While in the Brotherhood, they must make a promise of poverty, chastity and obedience, but these are temporary vows, which can be renewed.

Kopuria believed that after five years of service a man should be free to return to his community and start a family if that was his calling. Release from the community, after a valuable period of service, was not a thing of shame but to be celebrated at the feast day. Groups were set up within each village called the Companions whose work it was to help the Brotherhood through prayer and material support and follow up their ministry after the brothers had moved on to the next village. Again this has made people feel that this community is theirs and depends on their support.

The Melanesian Brotherhood has established 27 households in all five provinces of the Solomon Islands. Most of these are small, leaf-roofed working households built in the more remote missionary areas, which will become the base for about four to six brothers for mission and touring. A lot of the brothers' work now involves secondary evangelism: helping to encourage and build up the faith of many who are still Christian but only in a very nominal way These bare-footed evangelists tour the remotest villages, lead Sunday Schools, youth groups and adult teaching, lead worship, and act dramas in the villages. Their households aim to become a parable of community life.

The Melanesian Brotherhood is the oldest and largest community within the Church of Melanesia. Yet each of the other religious communities shares in much of the same ministry while having its own charisma and gifts. The Sisters of Melanesia were founded by a woman from Guadalcanal, Nesta Tiboe, in 1979.

In 1967 Nesta received a vision in which she realized that Melanesian women were also called to serve God "without fear, shame and doubt." Nesta was a brave and determined woman and though facing much male opposition at first, established a community of women on the same lines as the Melanesian Brotherhood.

There are now 30 sisters, with no lack of vocations. The sisters' community is marked by its joy and simplicity of lifestyle. Although it has been more difficult for young women to tour the villages, they now have an active outreach program, a disciplined and devout prayer life and a deserved reputation for help and hospitality.

The ministry of the Sisters of the Church was extended to Melanesia in 1970. Mother Emily the founder born in England, 1836, was a woman of tireless energy whose vision combined both adoration and action: Both are very much in evidence in the Solomons today. Their households have become sanctuaries for mothers and their children escaping domestic violence and the sisters are frequently called upon to protect women and children from drunk and violent partners.

Recently the sisters addressed the problem of street children in Honiara, at one point providing accommodation for nine under 10-year-olds whom they had found living on the streets and fending for themselves.

The sisters have opened the eyes of many people and, by their example, have encouraged the church to become more socially aware. They have also won the respect of many people by showing the wonderful potential and gifts women have to offer within the church.

The Society of St. Francis Pacific Island Province is also growing more quickly than any other. It is an ecologically aware community, as one would expect, and, in a country where the rain forests are being devastated, their friary at Hautabu and Little Portion is a refreshing alternative with its tree planting, chickens, organic farm and cattle. Many of the Franciscan households are to be found in the towns.

The urban problems are growing and all the religious communities are increasingly called upon to minister to these needs. Modern "heathens" are often more difficult to convert for their world is no longer related to the world of the spirit but the modern gods of materialism.

At their best the religious communities are living the Gospel in a very direct way and that is their major contribution to the church. By living such a radical alternative to the values to which modern society has become addicted they open up to others the hope and the possibilities of the kingdom of which Christ spoke.

This article is adapted from A resource Book for the Training and Mission of the Melanesian Brotherhood, by Mr. Carter

In traditions in which scientific theology has been cultivated (e.g., pagan, Jewish, Christian, Muslim), it has always been recognized that theology is grounded in and illuminated by divine revelation. As Aristotle says, we have this knowledge “because the gods are not jealous.” Thus, for Christians, theology begins with God’s Word revealed (in Creation, in the Incarnation, in the Holy Scriptures and the Sacred Tradition which links us to that Word), and the progress of theology is a matter of “faith seeking understanding” (St. Anselm).

It might seem obvious that Canadian Anglicans should seek to understand their faith, yet the opportunities for doing so are meagre. Our universities have pretty much abandoned “the queen of the sciences”; theological colleges, with very crowded curriculum, have tended to sacrifice the study of theology to make room for professional training; and bishops have often discouraged the advanced study of theology as irrelevant to parish ministry.

But our neglect of the critical, scientific study of theology leaves us vulnerable to all the passing fads and preoccupations of our particular time and place, and leads us to form policies on the basis of (often ill-informed) majority opinion, or majority “feeling.” In the absence of critical study, opposed views become opposed dogmatisms (whether liberal or conservative), and debate becomes the unprofitable argument of a screech against a scream.

The issues that now divide Anglicans, in Canada and throughout the world (liturgical, moral, etc.), are essentially theological issues, and the creative resolution of our conflicts will depend very much upon a renewed commitment to the science and critical study of theology.

The value of theological study, however, goes far beyond such practical consideration. The Christian life is fundamentally a matter of knowing and loving God, and all else in that perspective. Our loving is the final moment, but our loving proceeds from our knowing. It is thus, indeed, that we are “saved by faith.” Our theology is our endeavour to understand that faith, and, by grace, to be made perfect in the love of God who reveals himself in that faith. In the end, we shall know as we are known and love as we are loved. That is theology’s completion.

It might seem obvious that Canadian Anglicans should seek to understand their faith, yet the opportunities for doing so are meagre.… Theological colleges, with very crowded curriculum, have tended to sacrifice the study of theology to make room for professional training.

One student told that reporter, “I’ve seen people more shocked than that from someone passing out. No one was crying. Some were joking.”

In John Donne’s metrically cadenced world, when things died, they did so dramatically and in a sudden and absolute sense. The bell tolls for thee! No longer it seems. Today, when things die, they do so gradually, by degrees, necrosis in the smallest increments. It is a frightening thing when what is dying is akin to values or to sensitivity — things, after all, that make us human.

Such visceral immunization to shocking incidents as those students displayed is a phenomenon more transfixing, more chilling and more appalling than even the events that give rise to them. The moral lassitude and numbness that accepts violence and wrongs as a commonplace is in many ways one of the evils of our times. It is a sin that crosses the generations, starting with parents, once immunized to pornographic television images of napalmed bodies in Vietnam or skeletal children from Ethiopian famines. And today the children of these people kill and maim for sport in video games deemed harmless since they contain neither nudity nor graphic sex.

This lack of commitment — of what the French call engagement — in one’s surroundings amounts to a kind of death in life, a torpor of the soul. It is a decline in feeling, a decline in caring, all the more sinister for the gradual way in which it can come upon us. No bell, sadly, ever tolls sonorously to herald the demise of compassion.

One of the great dangers of life in today’s frenetically paced world is that the acceptance of huge changes that we have learned to cope with on a daily basis may also have inured us to the little things. We see avalanches and sea changes and we take them in stride, and yet we so easily miss the microcosms, life’s erosions and the difference that a grain of sand can make in the scheme of things. When shots fired in a school parking lot become less interesting than a game of chess, something has gone terribly wrong.

Recently, I engaged a close friend in a prolonged conversation via e-mail about repercussions to the residential schools crisis and in the course of that, one of the eventualities we discussed was a social climate in which the moral influence of organized religion would be diminished or perhaps hardly be evident at all. This is a prospect that makes me profoundly uncomfortable. All the more so when one is confronted by some of life’s more dismal eventualities such as when people get shot without bystanders seeming to care much about what they have witnessed. We ought to care deeply about such things and the place to learn this caring, this communion with our fellow humans, ought to be in church. Take that away, and the world is diminished.

And yet in the end, it may be useful to think now and again about a world without churches and without the reflective moral suasion that they bring to our lives, often in spite of ourselves, often without us paying any attention to them at all. The British poet Philip Larkin, very much an unchurchly person, once paused in an abandoned church and mused about what would become of such places when they “cease out of use.” He also wondered why it was that he had bothered to stop there at all. He wrote:

It pleases me to stand in silence here;
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies,
And that much can never be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

Indeed, we should hope that such wisdom never shall be obsolete and that there will forever be places in which to seek it – both places of the heart and physical spaces “proper to grow wise in.”