The Rev. Canon Maylanne Maybee (second from left) celebrated her 60th birthday by hosting a total of 60 friends for dinner throughout the year.

I was talking about my impending birthday with a friend who had spent time in China, and he told me that a 60th birthday is considered very special in Chinese culture. In fact, the Chinese traditionally do not pay much attention to birthdays until the 60th, which they usually mark with a big celebration. Sixty years is regarded as the completion of one life cycle, and 61 the beginning of a new life cycle. Not only was this heartening, but it had special meaning for me. I like to tell people I was “made in China” (though born in Toronto) and I’m as old as the People’s Republic of China. As a reminder of my origins, my parents gave me a Chinese name with an Anglicized spelling, “Maylanne,” meaning “beautiful orchid."

In taking inventory of my life at this stage, I was aware of how precious my family was becoming to me: my parents, siblings, their offspring and mine, even my “exes”—my former husband, my brother’s former wife. I was aware too of the many friendships that had blossomed over the years through my justice work at Church House—in Toronto, across Canada, and overseas.

On the other hand, as workload increased and resources decreased, I was also aware of the absence of Sabbath time in my life—time for rest, for re-creation, for being creative, for nurturing these friendships, and showing friends and family the gratitude I felt for their support and hospitality. I started thinking of how to involve them in celebrating my jubilee year.

I played with the idea of a kind of cross-Canada progressive dinner—borrowing kitchens and dining rooms and hosting friends and family for meals on my travels from Victoria to Halifax. Then I thought of having 60 friends for dinner over “a month of Sundays”—four or five weekends in February and March. But both plans seemed too ambitious.

Eventually, the idea dawned on me to celebrate a diamond jubilee year, and invite 60 people for dinner in various sittings over a 12-month period. I considered who should be invited with whom, and worked out a nice chart of 10 dinner parties with six friends per meal, evenly spaced from February to February, with time off in the summer.

I decided to start my dinner project with people I had known the longest—people such as Michael and Dorothy Peers, whose wedding I had attended when I was 15 years old; Alyson Barnett-Cowan, who entered Trinity College as an undergraduate the same year I did; Kate and Helena, who were divinity classmates; and so on.

What I soon learned, however, was that even with four weeks’ notice, or more, it’s impossible to coordinate everyone’s commitments. So I just assembled a company of friends as best I could. I had determined that with limited space and cutlery, eight people, including me, would be the maximum I could handle. But, surprise! At that first dinner in February, 10 people sat at table: a couple who had been out of town phoned the morning of the party and said they’d love to come. I used every leaf in my dining room table and sat two at each end. It worked fine. (This was good practice for another dinner at which two people showed up when we were about to sit down—I’d forgotten they were coming!)

What did I serve?  I’m no great cook, but I can follow recipes and do fine with step-by-step menus that are timed by the day and hour. I decided to start with oxtail soup, in keeping with the Chinese year of the Ox when I was born. I researched cook-ahead menus on the Internet and served pork, vegetables, salad, and a lovely peach desert. My Sinophile friend had told me it was a Chinese tradition to serve foods with auspicious connotations on a special birthday: “long-life noodles,” eggs, and “peaches”—a dessert of steamed wheat in the shape of a peach with a sweet filling.

Later in February, I hosted a dinner for 12 family members in Picton, about midway between Ottawa and Toronto, two cities where most of them live. It was a lovely postmodern occasion that included ex-spouses and new partners. For the meal, I hired Deb—a friend who boarded with me while studying theology and had been a chef in her former life. At the end, I made a little speech about my love and appreciation for every family member, new and old. This had a healing effect and became a feature of my monthly meals.

As the weeks went by, I soon learned that, as someone once pointed out, when we make plans, God laughs! Certainly planning to have six people a month for 10 months was a laugh! In April, Holy Week and Easter came, and in a clergy household, a birthday dinner was out of the question. In May, my father died, aged 90—a sorrowful, intense, yet exhilarating event that took every ounce of my energy.

No dinner for two months, then three, then four, then five. June was conference month, and I didn’t have one weekend at home. In July, I left for four weeks of vacation, and in August my son got married. I hosted a wedding rehearsal party—cooked and served by the intrepid Deb—but didn’t count it as a jubilee dinner. As the year progressed, my motivation was waning, and I wondered whether I should quietly drop the whole idea.

I was saved when I found an unexpected companion for the journey in Julia Child, who arrived in my life late August when I went to see the movie Julie and Julia. Until then, Julia Child’s name was only faintly familiar to me, but her ebullient personality, portrayed by Meryl Streep, leapt out from the screen and filled me with delight. All that feasting and drinking with friends looked wonderful!

Along with the rest of the world, I bought a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In September I organized two birthday dinners in quick succession. I ventured to make the boeuf bourguignon for one, coq au vin for the other. It was a thrill to replicate these recipes, even in the most modest way, and serve them in my own little house.

I began to realize that there is a certain economy of hospitality that goes beyond mere reciprocity. Friendship begets friendship. One dinner companion invited me to her graduation—42 years after she had begun her degree. Another was inspired to organize a neighbourhood reunion of friends I hadn’t seen in 30 years (see picture). Yet another gave me a copy of My Life in France, Julia Child’s story of becoming a chef, cooking teacher, and hostess extraordinaire. Reading about her life breathed joy and spirit into my own modest little jubilee project. It was these moments, rather than the stress of the workplace, that began to form the reality of my life.

At the time of writing, I am almost at the end of my jubilee year. I have had eight dinner parties and served 55 friends. I’m thinking of a prize for the sixtieth person who comes through the door!  My only regret is that I didn’t have people sign a guest book, and I didn’t take pictures. I’m now looking forward to gathering friends just for the joy of it. And I’ve signed up for cooking classes in this year’s “Winterlicious” festival to build confidence and expand my culinary repertoire.

I’ve learned that it takes a lot of time and effort to find a date that works, invite friends, plan a menu, shop, prepare, and clean up. Sometimes the dinners have taken place right after a long trip or an intense conference when I’d rather wear my pyjamas, watch a movie, and eat popcorn.

In My Life in France, Julia described one occasion when she and her husband, Paul, were supposed to visit close friends in Provence, but it began to seem just too inconvenient and bothersome. She remembered a favourite saying, though, that had carried them through their diplomatic days: “No one’s more important than people!”  “In other words,” writes Julia, “friendship is the most important thing—not career or housework, or one’s fatigue—and it needs to be tended and nurtured.”

This “sixty for supper” experience has given me new insight into the Jewish understanding of the Sabbath, closely associated with the notion of Jubilee. In his book The Sabbath, Rabbi Abraham Heschel writes, “Six days a week the spirit is alone, disregarded, forsaken, forgotten. Working under strain, beset with worries, enmeshed in anxieties, man [sic] has no mind for ethereal beauty…. Then comes the sixth day. Anxiety and tension give place to the excitement that precedes a great event.”

So it is with these birthday meals—the day before is spent in a fever of marinating and moving furniture. Then the guests arrive, the candles are lit, the wine is poured, and life stops for a minute. It’s a tiny glimpse into the seventh day when God rested from all that he had done in creation and said, “indeed, it was very good.”

Children from the San Juan Apostol parish, Chichicastenango, Guatemala. Photo by Emilie Smith.

I love Guatemala. I have loved Guatemala for 25 years and now I am living here, come from our mountains in Vancouver, to these great, majestic mountains in the Department of El Quiché. Here I am, an Anglican Volunteer in Mission.

My view on mission is that we shouldn't engage in it at all unless we are clear that we are God's servants, and servants of God's people, and that we know almost nothing, and are not the carriers of faith to those who haven't yet received it. I consider myself a pilgrim and servant, and am grateful for the hospitality and the kindness with which I have been received in Guatemala.

Let me share a few words about how my heart is being undone, and re-done, in the shadow of the crucifixion. For Guatemala is a land of great suffering, of terrible poverty, of obscene violence. It is also a holy land.

A holy, broken land
The reason Guatemala is holy is because Ajaw, the creator of heaven and earth, made this land, alive with its forests and mountains, its endless fields of corn, its holy and sacred people, who have kept the days and the stories of their ancestors. The Maya have lived on this land for 10,000 years, and they have kept the count of days, tended the land, and fed their families sacred corn of the four colours from the four corners of the earth.

Five hundred years ago strangers arrived in this holy land, strangers bearing firearms and Bibles, riding horses, and—worst of all—carrying dread disease. Human geographers estimate that 90 per cent of Central and South America’s Indigenous population was decimated in the 100 years of epidemics that followed the 1521 Spanish invasion.

More recently, during the Central American civil wars of the 1970s and early 1980s, Guatemala suffered the worst genocide our hemisphere has known in recent history. Over 200,000 people—men, women, children and the elderly—were murdered. Another quarter million fled the country, and a full million, one in every nine Guatemalans, were internally uprooted and displaced.

In 1996 a peace treaty was signed, but little true healing, and no justice has occurred since then. In fact, levels of violence and poverty remain virtually unchanged. In some rural areas of the country, 80 per cent of Maya children suffer from chronic malnutrition.

The church, both Catholic and Protestant, has been both a faithful witness to this crucifixion, and a blind participant in it. The church has been both witness to the resurrection, and perpetrators of the ongoing violence. Current levels of violence in Guatemala are shocking and terrifying, and levels of poverty are heart-breaking and obscene.

Where my heart is supposed to be
With this history in its heart, the Guatemalan Episcopal Church (a small but strong faith community) has begun a new ministry—the creation of a new diocese in the Western Highlands of Guatemala, to attend to those areas most devastated by the history of violence and poverty. I have been invited by the church and its bishops, Guerra and Lainfiesta, to participate in this holy ministry, and I am delighted to say “yes!” to the church in Guatemala, and to God. So that is how I have ended up here, priest-in-charge of San Juan el Apostol, in Chichicastenango, assistant to Bishop Lainfiesta. I have also been invited to begin a mission in Santa Cruz del Quiché, 15 kilometres up the road, where I will live.

After a month’s travel from Canada—by bus, train, and pickup truck—I arrived, at last in this holy land. As I write this, I’m resting, while Bishop Lainfiesta goes back to the city for a week. I am left here, it is raining endlessly, and all I do is pray and think.

Yesterday a man appeared in the yard, and I went out to greet him. He is Miguel, Akiel in K’iche’. His Spanish is rough, but my K’iche’ is practically nothing, and I find out that he is the husband of Reverenda Pascuala—my ministry partner at San Juan. Joy! We talk for a while, as best we can, and he corrects my pronunciation, and I think that I will learn K’iche’, if I throw myself in the deep end. K’iche’ words sound different in his mouth, but I’m not a bad parrot, and I have a good ear. After a few tries it sounds okay. My heart swells in happiness, and he tells me that later la Reverenda will come by and say evening prayer. She’s busy right now, he says. She has two ladies about to give birth. La Reverenda Pascuala is a midwife, and a healer, and a priest. I am deeply grateful that we are working together.

Later, Akiel comes back and brings me three pears, little sweet fat pears that taste like candy. For my welcoming he says, and I grin, like a fool. Matyox! Thank you! And then la Reverenda comes by, and three, then four, then five children, neighbours they are, and we file into the church. Glory be! Church is church, and prayer book is prayer book and evening prayer is there, and the Magnificat, Mary’s song and God’s promise that the hungry will be filled with good things, and I pray, and try not to cry (again) but I cry mostly because I’m so happy, and I can’t explain it, but in this dusty, drippy, plain, yellow church, here with these people, my heart is where it is supposed to be!

And after the book service we kneel and La Reverenda Pascuala prays in K’iche’ and I know that it doesn’t matter what language you use, because fierce Ajaw, mother hen, mother bear, mother earth, has laid a great banquet before us, to share.

I cry, as I kneel in the yellow church, because I read before Akiel came that Guatemala has reached the level of the fourth country in the world with the highest rate of chronic malnutrition. The highest in Latin America. That goes too with the useless number that Guatemala has the most unequal land distribution in the Americas. Does that have anything to do with the legacy of the unacknowledged genocide, the quarter million dead and buried in these cornfields that surround me? My tears are falling on the wooden kneeler, that Oscar the young boy who read out the gospel (Jesus not loved in Nazareth) put down for us to share.

So friends, the rain comes down and no one can stop it. God is the lord of heaven and earth, no one else is, and he is a God of Justice. I don’t know exactly what my life here will be like for the next two years. Challenging. An unfolding blessing. I think it was Akiel’s pears of welcome that assured me, a hot-headed pilgrim, that here too, is my home.

The diaconal ministry of the baptized is a profoundly hopeful ministry.

This is the last of three articles by the Ven. Dr. Thompson on the orders of ordained ministry—priests, bishops, and deacons. The first installment presented the ordained ministries as refracting the ministries conferred in baptism, then focused on the ministry of priests. The second installment focused on episcopal ministry, and now we turn to diaconal ministry of the baptized.

Three losses characterize the human predicament in these early years of the twenty-first century. These losses—the loss of the holy, the loss of communion, and the loss of mission—haunt our contemporary landscape.

As it turns out, these losses are not unique to us or to this time. They are, in fact, part of a universal rhythm of grief and grace woven into the human story. And because our losses are part of that rhythm, our ancestors have endowed us with resources—traditions and stories, songs and prayers—that allow us to endure and address them. Sadly, we have not always treasured those endowments, and so a community once uniquely equipped to address the hunger provoked by these losses has unwittingly relinquished much of that capacity.

Churches have settled into forgetfulness. Traditions and stories, songs and prayers that once sounded across the life of God’s people like “Reveille,” awakening them to the coming day, now feel more like a lullaby.

In Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard probes the loss of the holy in the lives of churches:

Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.

The holy, the undomesticated wild mystery that runs through the life of the world, has in many places—even in churches—been driven underground, usurped by gods who can be tamed, but cannot save.

They have mouths but do not speak; eyes but do not see.
They have ears but do not hear; noses, but do not smell.
They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk;
and they do not make a sound in their throat. (Psalm 115)

As I wrote in the first of these reflections (Fall 2008, “A Witness to the Holy”), attention to the holy finds itself expressed and refracted through the ministry of ordained priests, but it is the responsibility of the whole community of the baptized. Recovering our capacity for the transformative encounter with the holy depends in no small part on the capacity of those ordained priest to invite the whole community of the baptized into this dimension of the ministry conferred in our baptism. But it depends also on the willingness of that community to take up that invitation and, as I wrote several years ago, to visit the house of a dangerous God, to risk the unsettling encounter with an undomesticated wild mystery of a God who runs through the life of the world for its healing and renewal but not for its ease.

The second of the losses is the loss of communion. As our proximity in a global human village brings us into contact with the Other, a global village in which we ourselves are Other for so many, we are more and more in need of evidence that our Other-ness need not make us enemies, need not lead to violence and hostility. Where values diverge, where practices among one group are in conflict with practices in another, a human capacity for communion, for sensing a common life even and perhaps especially where diversity and divergence are obvious and persistent, will make the difference between a good future and no future at all.

But one need only explore recent events among Anglicans to discern that, as the world hungers for a sense of human communion—that is, of people and communities working with diversity toward a common life in service of the common good—the churches are no safe place for such hopes. Some of the same Primates who said in 2000 that “when we turn away from one another, we turn away from the cross of Jesus” now turn away from the very presence of Jesus in the blessing, breaking, and sharing of bread with those of whose leadership and discipleship they disapprove.

In a world of alienation, distrust, hostility, and indifference, God calls the community of the baptized to offer an alternative vision of human interactions: communion instead of rivalry. That some of those ordained bishop use that office to obstruct rather than refract the light of communion is nothing short of scandal. That others find Christ’s accomplishment of communion, in the sacrifice of love on the cross, more compelling than their need to prevail in doctrinal squabbling, is a sign that the office still functions to refract the light of communion.

The third loss is the loss of mission. Remarkably, the church has become, in many ways, an association of religion clubs, each franchise desperately committed to competing for a larger share of a shrinking market. Religion clubs concern themselves with producing an acceptable religion product, either for existing members—who often prefer things to stay more or less the same—or for the prospect of new members, in whose name have been proposed and enacted many changes that failed to draw them into club membership.

In his 1994 book, In Over Our Heads, Robert Kegan asserts that, until some time in the twentieth century, the final stage of human development involved learning to cooperate with others. The end toward which such cooperation would lead was a matter of what he calls “a community’s collective intelligence.” Purpose, that is to say, was provided, mission was transparent and in place. In contemporary society, purpose is no longer provided by the community, and mission is neither simple nor clear. This creates what Kegan calls an “extraordinary cultural demand” that each person create internally what once was given by culture—a sense of the purpose toward which we might direct our lives. We have lost our mission, and must somehow create it for ourselves.

Religion clubs have nothing to offer in the face of the human loss of mission. They enact the same selfishness and inward-turning purposes that plague so much of the life of the world. They divert God’s gifts from God’s transforming mission into institutional self-preservation for which no Messiah, no matter how kind, would offer his life. And they offer no contradiction to prevailing narratives of the age, narratives in which selfishness is the only reasonable response to a world of rivalry for scarce resources.

In fact, it was not for, but against the instinct of self-preservation among the leaders of the temple that Jesus acted during his ministry. That ministry took up the proclamation of his cousin John, a proclamation of a new kingdom, of a new creation, of a new life, but not of a new religion club. In Luke’s gospel, he echoes Isaiah and takes upon himself the Spirit-driven work of freedom for prisoners, liberty for the oppressed, sight for the blind, good news for the poor. He enacts the Kingdom of God in healing and in driving out demons, proclaims it in teaching and parable, clothes himself in its ethic of compassion and justice, and serves it in his body absolutely and at enormous cost in his passion and death.

In all of this, Jesus lives out the servant ministry conferred in baptism and held as a common vocation by the whole community of the baptized. This ministry, refracted through the life and ministry of those ordained deacon, is not simply a ministry of serving others, but is also a ministry of disclosing, proclaiming, enacting and serving the Kingdom of God, and offering it as a living alternative to the kingdoms of this world, governed as they are by indifference, hostility, entitlement, and lethal rivalry. Diaconal ministry joins the community of the baptized to the mission of God, who seeks the transformation of the world, and offers Jesus into our midst to proclaim and enact that transformation among us.

Like the orders of priest and bishop, the order of deacon serves to recall the church to a vital dimension of the ministry conferred in baptism—the dimension by which God’s mission offers purpose and freedom. The diaconal ministry of the baptized is a profoundly hopeful ministry, because it both proclaims and enacts the extraordinary truth that our lives have a purpose that we need not invent, that we cannot purchase, and that we share with others in such a way that even the most modestly gifted life can contribute to the common good, and to the dream of God.

Two-thirds of the island of Walande (Solomon Islands) were swept away by king tides in 2009. Photo by Derick Loea.

A retired bishop explains how global warming is flooding his former diocese.

For 34 years, I have lived and ministered in the South Pacific, where all countries are affected in one way or another by global warming and rising sea levels. We are sometimes called the “liquid continent” and when the sea level rises, for many it becomes a crisis.

Much media attention has been focused on the small nation of Tuvalu, whose entire land area is virtually at sea level. Indeed, Tuvaluans expressed disbelief about a recent tsunami warning issued for them “to head for higher ground.” There is no higher ground. And the whole nation could not fit atop the country's only four-storey office building. With rising sea levels, storms, and “king tides,” frequently much of the country is under water already. Discussion is underway about virtually resettling the whole nation, perhaps the world's first global-warming refugees.

I write just after the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen has taken place. The results are not very hopeful for the Pacific nations greatly affected by climate change. Along with the Minister of the Environment, three young women from the Solomon Islands attended the summit to represent the Solomons, taking with them a film on the effects of climate change here that was shown to the delegates. I have not yet seen this film, but hope it is shown widely.

Solomon Islands encompass many low-lying coral atolls—large, ring-shaped reefs—including the world's largest inhabited coral atoll, Lord Howe or Ontong Java. It is located northeast of Isabel and Malaita islands, a day's trip by ship from the nearest large island. The atoll has an overall area of 1,400 sq. kms. (including ocean), but the 122 small islands that make it up are only 12 sq. kms. in total. Lord Howe is a part of the diocese I looked after for 12 years and I visited it half a dozen times. Many times I spent the whole day inside the peaceful lagoon, with strings of islands in the distance on both sides of the Southern Cross. I would sail from the large village of Luaniua on the south to the smaller village of Pelau on the north, each a parish with its own parish priest. The atoll is entirely Anglican. Most of it is virtually at sea level.

The people of Lord Howe are Polynesians, closely related to the people of Nukamanu (or Tasman) islands located to the north on the Papua New Guinea side of the border. The atoll has a population of about 3,000, all living off the rich resources of the lagoon. The islands are famous for their fresh and sun-dried reef fish, clams, and swamp taro, a traditional root crop grown in pits that are hollowed out of the sand and coral and then filled with compost. The men have incredible diving skills and the women dry fish and make a heavy swamp taro pudding, kakake.

However, in my last two visits to Lord Howe, clearly something was wrong. Sea water was seeping into the swamp taro pits from below and, following storms and “king tides,” covering and flooding them from above. The sea salt killed the young taro shoots and in a few months the villages were without a major staple, requiring the emergency importation of rice to prevent people from starving.

After church one day, the parish committee and I talked about global warming and rising sea levels over breakfast, considering possible solutions. There has been talk of resettlement, and at one point Malaita province even tried to set aside land for resettlement from another low-lying atoll to the south, Sikaiana. But the Malaita land was disputed and nothing came of the plan. Papua New Guinea has set up a resettlement scheme for people on Polynesian atolls near Bougainville and there has been a little migration. But always the problem is the same—for hundreds of years Lord Howe people have been living off the sea and to shift to the land without a reef nearby will require a whole new way of life. Many would prefer risking the rising sea levels.

Interestingly, the solution the community felt most positive about was intermarriage with other island groups, permitting them to resettle without controversy on other islands. Yet with such resettlement there is the risk of losing language, culture, and an ancient and distinctive way of life.

There has also been some attempt at adaption—for example, introducing vegetable gardening on raised beds, but there really is not much good soil, as the atolls are almost entirely sand.

Because the lagoon is rich in bêche-de-mer (sea cucumber, for which Asians will pay dearly), clams, trochus (sea snails), and fish, my guess is that many people will decide to stay, even as the sea rises, coping however they can. But many others are leaving, moving to the Lord Howe Settlement in the capital Honiara (also at sea level, as is the whole central business district of Honiara) or other places around the Solomon Islands.

This is just one global warming story from the Solomons. There are also the artificial islands of Malaita and atolls of Temotu. On the small island of Fanelei in South Malaita, many times I have waded to church in sea water up to my calves at high tides. Salt water people that they are, people build their houses higher and higher or move to the mainland. But more and more, “king tides,” which often accompany a storm and high winds, destroy everything in their path. Rising sea levels are part of this new phenomenon. As land is jealously guarded in the Solomons, some people have no place to go.

I have just returned from spending Christmas in nearby Walande, where people, concerned about rising sea levels, have been moving to the mainland for the last 10 years. Early last year two-thirds of the island were finally swept away. The accompanying photo was taken soon after that disaster. But the new mainland settlement flourishes, as people are still near the sea upon which they so much depend.

Solomon Islanders are not without blame, as they too contribute to global warming. Logging continues at an unsustainable rate. Taxis, buses, trucks, and diesel generators spew out pollution. Clearing of mangrove forests goes ahead, although recent tsunamis have, I think, slowed down this destruction. The Solomons should be using solar and wind power rather than fossil fuels, but the equipment and installation costs are beyond most people's means.

Solomon Islanders are survivors. I believe that, despite the rising sea levels, many people will stay where they are and cope; many have no choice as they are unable to find land elsewhere, unless the government facilitates resettlement. Others will move to town, contributing to urban drift and social unrest. Rising sea levels are just one more problem for the many people who already struggle against rampant malaria, high infant and maternal mortality rates, inaccessible education, and the constant grind of poverty. However, the next generation may not be so accepting of the status quo. While they have not generally done so yet, rising sea levels may displace these other problems as some people's first concern. Land problems will be the inevitable result.

Where is the church on all this? The Anglican Church of Melanesia sends representatives to the Anglican Communion Environmental Network meetings. We have offered to host the next meeting of the Network in the Solomons so others can see how serious the problem is. I also think that if eventually the government does not act where resettlement is the only option, the church, with its commitment to holistic human development, will act instead. But the best solution would be a change in the world's energy consumption habits and a reverse of what is still, for now, reversible.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This video was created by Jason Smart and the Rev. Canon Tim Smart, Diocese of Montreal. Visit the Mile End Mission online.

How can a priest remember the dead and proclaim the Gospel of life?

In a recent Globe and Mail news item, the social customs that surround contemporary funerals highlighted, for me, the dilemma many clergy face when planning funerals: it is difficult to combine a life celebration with Gospel proclamation.

An English vicar said he felt his role was superfluous at funerals that featured pop music and bad prose from grieving participants…. His comments prompted debate over what is an appropriate way to mourn and led one bereavement charity to brand his blog “pretty insensitive.” (Globe and Mail, October 21, 2009)

While I understand the frustration and the difficulty expressed, I do not sympathize with the vicar’s sense of helplessness and affront.

When I was in seminary in the late1960s, I was told repeatedly that any words spoken at a funeral had to be centred on the resurrection, and the best liturgical resource was The Book of Common Prayer (BCP). Eulogies were out, and the name of the deceased was to be said only once, in the set prayers. These were the guidelines.

That mantra of seminary training changed radically for me in my first year of ordained ministry. Randy, a 50-year-old man with Down Syndrome, had died, and at his funeral I was deeply moved by his family’s obvious pain and tremendous sense of loss. In dutifully using the BCP service, I spontaneously remarked mid-service that Randy’s life had profoundly enriched the lives of those around him and that the BCP service recognized that his life was as significant to God, his family, and his friends as any similar service—say, for the Queen. Those simple words were so cherished and remarked on at the funeral reception that I knew I had to change the way I/we did funerals. The BCP liturgy was an excellent blueprint, but it was utterly devoid of humanity and needed some further addition.

Many years later, a former funeral director and now a newly minted Anglican priest (and my curate) observed that Anglican clergy, in his experience, provided “the least effective funerals and ministry to the grieving.” His remarks were based on years of observing the rigidity of Anglican clergy in excluding anything personal from the funeral service.

A good deal of this observed rigidity has since changed and, indeed, many clergy would say that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of the personal, the tasteless, and the sentimental.

All of this begs the question: who is the funeral for?  My simple answer is, “For the living.” Of course, we do express liturgically what we deeply feel: that God will grant eternal rest to our loved one. And, of course, our funeral homilies express “the hope that is within us,” but the living need profoundly more from the liturgy, i.e., to remember, to give thanks, and then to begin letting go and letting God. All of this requires that we be patient with the sometimes “too long” tributes that can indeed lionize the deceased, and we need to be somewhat indulgent of the occasional piece of sentimental prose or poetry. People are struggling to express the inexpressible, and they need to hear clergy be more transparent about their own struggle to express what words often fail to convey. The bereaved need an opportunity for conversation and are often anxious to hear what we have to say, as long as our response doesn’t appear to censor.

Many times in my life and ministry I have been rescued from my own verbal inadequacies by music and art. I am grateful that our liturgies in the BCP—and more recently in The Book of Alternative Services—have rescued us from the tyranny of needing to produce a new and improved model every time we officiate at a funeral. On the other hand, clergy need to enter into the hard work of listening closely to the grieving and allowing a reflection of the deeply personal into each and every liturgy.

Clergy can give to the grieving the impression that their own personal sensibilities or those of “the institution” need to be met in funeral planning. It is so important to remember that the liturgy is intended to address the needs of the living. It seems to me that really listening and responding to the community of family and friends is the most loving thing to do; hence, this is the gospel imperative we need to follow.

The Eucharist is a real test of grace for those who can't tolerate the elements.

Six years ago, eating out got a lot more complicated for me. I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease and learned that eating even a crumb of gluten (the protein found in wheat) makes me violently ill. This meant no more regular pizza, cookies, bread—and communion wafers. Among many other adjustments, I’ve had to learn the complicated choreography of taking gluten-free communion.

Celiac Disease is a relatively easy affliction to have. Once you discover that gluten makes you sick, you just stop eating it and you feel better. Of course there’s the constant label-reading, the never-ending hunt for the gluten that lurks in spices, soya sauce, and even the glue you lick to seal envelopes. But considering that many diseases must be kept in check by drugs or physiotherapy, this constant vigilance isn’t bad.

One thing I did resent about being a Celiac was my new public pickiness. I had prided myself on being, as one friend put it, a “culinary cowgirl.” I was adventurous and had a big appetite. Now, when eating out, I have to ask lots of nitpicky questions—for instance, “Do you cook your fries and chicken fingers in the same oil?”

I sometimes feel obnoxious.

Some servers are gracious, but others have been hostile or confused. I handed one waiter an information card on Celiac Disease and he handed it back. He thought I was proselytizing.

Improv at the rail
Of course, taking the Eucharist is the trickiest—and most important—“eating out” to navigate. Shortly after being diagnosed I moved to Kingston, Ont., and started attending my first Anglican church on a regular basis. Already the weekly procession to the communion rail and the prolonged kneeling made me feel conspicuous. I laid low for the first couple of weeks, wondering how to get what I needed gracefully.

Finally, I worked up the courage to approach the rector, and we made arrangements. He would put a rice cracker in a special silver box—a pyx—and I would signal for it at the communion rail. What kind of signal, I wondered? I’d seen genuflecting for the first time and wondered if I could just poke myself an extra time, on the mouth, and act like it was all part of the holy moment.

The next Sunday, we gave it a try. I processed, knelt, and whispered hoarsely “Rice cracker!” when the minister approached. Success! I thought, receiving the pyx. But when I returned to my pew, a neighbour asked, “What’s with the box? Are you getting an extra special body of Christ?”

I tried to tone it down. The Sunday afterwards I decided not to say anything, but just catch the rector’s eye. Instead, another minister came by, all too quickly, and thrust a regular wafer into my outstretched hands. Then, just as quickly, she snatched it back. The people beside me stared in shock.

“Don’t worry!” she assured them in a loud voice. “It’s not as if this woman has sinned more than any of you. She just has, um, food issues.” I bowed my head lower.

Options and grace
At least as a Protestant I could take a rice cracker, even if it sometimes led to embarrassing situations. Roman Catholics have had a harder time satisfying the Vatican’s requirements that all hosts have some wheat. In response, some Benedictine sisters have mixed up their own low-gluten wafers, still safe for Celiacs. Me, I can experiment endlessly with weird flours like amaranth, sorghum, or quinoa.

That is, if I choose to make my own wafer. Now that more people are being diagnosed with Celiac Disease (an estimated 1% of Canadians have it), there are lots of recipes and advice out there for how to be creative with communion choreography—everything from bringing your own wafers to convincing the whole church to go gluten-free.

Celiacs are not alone. Alcoholics, the physically challenged, and people with food allergies must also be cared for in a special way. Thankfully church leaders are becoming more aware and more flexible in accommodating different needs in the Eucharist.

Take, for example, the saints who work here at Church House. We celebrate a weekly Eucharist and the worship committee has ordered gluten-free wafers for me. They will place one out for me, even if I’m late, and they’ll often send along a Ziploc bag of wafers to off-site meetings.

My colleagues say, “It’s not a problem!” but I’m deeply moved by their actions. God’s grace seems to be present in a special way whenever “picky eaters” are included in the Eucharist. We want to blend in, but we are singled out and loved in sometimes awkward, but very real, ways. We also get to put food and drink in our mouths. We also remember Christ’s death for us.

I’ll always remember one time when I was visiting a church and tried to disappear during communion. The minister noticed me, learned of my condition, and came to find me after the service, holding the chalice and paten. I stood with him in the aisle, holding my coat and watching as people left the church.

“I don’t want to be a trouble,” I said.

“No, no, please come,” he said, handing me a rice cracker. “Ali, this is the body of Christ, broken for you.”