Put to the test

“We're all put to the test. But it never comes in the form or at the point we would prefer, does it?”

--David Mamet, The Edge

In the film The Edge, the two main characters are well-off guys, scouting locations for a high-fashion photo shoot in the Alaskan wilderness. But their small plane hits a flock of geese and crashes, killing the pilot, and stranding them in the middle of nowhere—lost, exposed, afraid, with only the clothes on their backs, their wits, and a single good pocketknife (the titular ‘edge’—geddit?).

They resolve to head back whence they came rather than await the uncertainty of rescue. They cut wood to make a fire their first night, but one of them accidentally cuts himself with the knife, putting the scent of blood in the air. A grizzly bear gets the scent, and the rest of the film is about how they respond to the bear’s relentless, remorseless, inexorable pursuit of them as prey. The grizzly cannot be reasoned with, negotiated with, will not tire, wants only to eat them alive.

The survival test they are put to was, one of them remembers, a rite of passage for young Amer-Indian boys. In order to become a full-fledged ‘brave’, an unprovided Amer-Indian boy had to go out into the wilderness and kill a bear. Only then could he be considered fit to take his place as an adult in the tribe. Many of course did not survive the ordeal. Those that did were fundamentally changed, fully ‘grown up’. There are many such rites of passage among indigenous people. The walkabout. The vision quest. Even young Massai warriors today have to test their mettle by approaching a lion, and slapping it on the backside.

Each of the two guys are carrying, of course, their own personal insecurities, delusions, and agendas. The older of the guys really gets that the situation is ‘do or die’. They cannot flee for long without food or shelter. They must kill the bear or the bear will kill them—there is no third way. They must focus on doing what is required to achieve this single, vital goal. What is being tested here is their character as supposed grown adults. At one point, they fail to catch the attention of a search plane. The younger of the two insists it will come back. The older of the two knows they cannot rely on this happening in time, and returns to the mission. The younger one says, “But can’t we think that...?” “No,” says the elder. Denial will not avail, only what you do and don’t do matters.

We no longer have formal rites of passage as a culture that clearly demarcate childhood from adulthood, rituals so scary that they amounted to a death-and-resurrection of the individual’s character. In place of a single ritual guided by ancestral wisdom, contemporary adulthood is supposed to develop after a drawn-out and tortuous period of adolescent psychodynamics. It is said the average teen experiences in a single day, all possible psychological states, including so-called ‘abnormal’ states. The ordeal of Year 12 exams is not the same. If you fail, you can pack up your life like a board game and play somewhere else, living to fight another day. No real harm, no ultimate foul. With no clear, testing demarcation between youth and age, it’s not surprising that we see in our culture so many childish behaviors in people who are outwardly adults. Bullying, lack of boundaries, risk-taking, sociopathic tantrums, status games.

Like all institutions and individuals across the world, this year has put us all to the test at a point and in a way we would not have preferred. We have been pursued by an implacable force of nature. Who the adults in the room already were, has become pretty evident. For many, this year was the rite of passage. Some have been changed by it. Some still flee in denial. And some, of course, have not survived.

In the film, the guys do manage to kill the bear, exactly as the Amer-Indian youth used to do. The edge—the knife itself—was useful, but was not what gave them ‘the edge’ over their gruesome adversary. What gave them the edge was their essential humanity—the ability to work together focused on their mission, despite their differences. Indeed their common urgent mission made their differences irrelevant.

Be it known, I have never mentioned COVID in this post.

How to Do Ritual in Virtual Space?

Fun and interesting fact: recent research shows that 46% of Gen Z (so MS and SS age range) have tried a religious or spiritual practice that is new to them since the COVID outbreak. 

Let that sink in.

Rather than a hindrance, COVID has offered a unique opportunity, and an urgency, to undertake a serious exploration of spiritual values. The ritual space provided by regular worship services is the traditional way churches have gone about pursuing this aim.

However, the very need Gen Z is having for spiritual and religious meaning has been caused by the very thing that makes traditional worship services impossible, namely the pandemic. The pandemic prevents the key element of ritual--being present together in a physical space for a fixed length of time that is set aside and apart from 'normal' activities.

Ritual gatherings can't be blithely dismissed. The practice of ritualized worship has survived for thousands of years because it is inherently well-designed to fulfil the very needs being expressed by Gen Z. Ritual worship has lasted for as long as it has because it's trusted and compelling and has adapted over time, to things as obvious as electricity, audio/video technologies, etc.

So just rub some new technology on it and it will be fine, right?

To be blunt: the technological tool at our disposable--Zoom--is not designed for ritual gathering, and it's hard to see it ever becoming adaptable to ritual gathering, and therefore to meeting the needs ritual gatherings address. Gatherings of human bodies do not occupy a grid-frame in constant surveillance, facing perpetually front-on like martinets. In ritual gatherings, we move our gaze around, we look to the peripheries or the ceiling. We are not always 'on'. We need not 'perform' attentiveness as we are compelled to on Zoom. In ritual gatherings, we can mentally check in and out, directing our attention into ourselves and out into the shared sphere as we feel moved to. The best we can do in Zoom is turn our camera off--which sends a message that may be interpreted as anything from boredom to active resistance. 

So we can't just map onto Zoom what we've loved about gathering in ritual space. What can we do to make the most of the substandard tool we currently have?

Some practical research is being done in this area to make the best use of the wrong tool. Emerging principles include:

1. Preparing the physical space, and marking the time as out-of-the-ordinary

2. Finding ways to 'lean into' the reality of where we each are

3. Finding ways to 'lean into' the fact that this is new and only partially adequate

4. Acknowledging that people feel safe at home in ways they would not in public spaces among strangers--thus a higher willingness to risk engaging with big questions with new people

5. Finding ways in the technology to help people connect--assign break out rooms, briefly check-ins from everyone.

Any thoughts? 

Feel free to comment or PM me.

It is possible to do things badly with great love

Chaplains and ministers are meant to embody a certain quality, called ‘pastoral presence’. Part of our role is the expectation to be a calm, non-anxious person in the crowd, the still point by which the community can get is bearings, a firm post we can lash our moorings to ‘til the rough weather passes. 

This quality of presence may sound like some mysterious, arcane power acquired by monk-like habits, but in fact it doesn’t require wisdom necessarily, or even squeaky-clean moral goodness. All that’s required is being reliably around and available to hold safe and meaningful space for people when and as they need it. We need to know certain people will just be there, even though we may never use them--kind of like church itself has become. 85% of Australians don’t go to churches except for rites of passage (the hatch, match, and dispatch), but need to know they’re still out there, gamely waiting like an eternally patient dog, loyally there to offer companionship when called. 

What it feels like.

We reach for church and chapel (and its ministers and chaplains) in the same way we reach for poetry--mostly in times of nerve-jangled distress or big transitions--death and birth and thoughts of these, such times as can only be framed, shared, and transcended through a language that’s at rather a higher pitch than one’s everyday chit-chat, or, in the case of ministry, by a person who’s in a role that’s something other than one’s everyday associates. So how about this analogy: a chaplain is to lay staff, as poetry is to conversation. We seldom need or want poetry or religion, but at those times when we do, we badly do, and nothing else will do. 

Here’s poem from a minister who’s a poet and songwriter, my colleague Rev. Lynn Ungar, which I get the feeling some of us might badly want or need to hear: 

Badly

Anything worth doing

Is worth doing badly

No one ever did something well

Without doing it poorly first.

But if we’re going to get real,

The chances of your ever getting

really good are slim at best.

The Olympics and the Pro leagues

Flee with the end of your puberty.

Maybe the Nobel or Pulitzer

Is out there waiting. But

I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Even on our best days,

Most of us are merely competent,

And much of the time, adequate is a stretch.

Appearances aside this might be

One of the happiest things I know.

I hereby absolve you

Of the need to be better

than anyone else. Poof.

It is possible to suck at things

With great love. Grab your Uke

And I’ll get my mandolin.

Meet me on the porch.

We’ll play together, under tempo

And ever so slightly out of tune.

Most of the time, I feel like I'm getting chaplaincy wrong, though I care about it and feel like I'm giving it my best shot. It's frustrating, because the last time I was in a school setting, I was a rather popular, even beloved, teacher--liked and respected in equal measure by my students. I still count many of them among my most precious relationships  after 30-odd years.

But that was in my 30's and 40's, and the work I was doing then was more central to the core business of schooling. Maybe now I'm in my 60's the gulf between my life experience and theirs is too wide, and the human man seems to be disappearing inside the marginalized clerical role I have to wear, leaving only the outer shell of it to do duty for the whole person. Maybe I have become less open-hearted that in youth, but it doesn't feel that way. Maybe the gap is cultural--Australian private school kids are not identical to international expat schools. There is this...distance I constantly feel, and I can't tell if it's in them, or in me, or just what we've collectively become since mobile telephony and social media have so rearranged the inner lives of everyone. 
Maybe this role can only be done in a way that's less satisfactory than my teaching used to be, and holding my new self to that old standard is unfair. 


I am hereby absolved of trying to be as good as the old me. Poof!

Life isn't a pathology: random thoughts after pastoral care of anxious students

Ours has been called an age of anxiety.

But are we now more acutely anxious than ever before? The pandemic certainly seems to have amped up the most common 'mental illness' of the 21st century. But hasn't the vulnerable human species always been living with anxiety? Not just humans, either--anxiety is common to all biological forms. Anxiety responses can be detected and measured in every life form, from a bacteria to a bird to a bee to a tree.

Any life form scans for threats all the time

Why? Because evolution. Living organisms have had 1.4 billion years' practice in being constantly on sentry duty, monitoring their environment for threats. Our late-evolved, highly-developed brains need only a nanosecond to home in on any anomaly in our scope and begin evaluating it, preparing to take evasive, life-preserving actions--freeze, faff, flight, flee. As it is doing this, other higher-brain capacities are either switched off or minimized--rationality, compassion, etc., get put on hold. Anxiety is biological, natural. Anxiety is inherent in living on this planet, and healthy anxiety has served us well for most of our evolution as a species. It has been a rational response to detecting threats and planning responses to replicate our DNA. Our ancestors spent eons as prey to teach us this, and we have learned it, but good.

But an extra dimension has been added to the threat environment. The current information age bombards us now with new universes of data that didn't exist before, giving us an entirely new field of reality to scan and react to, looking for threats to fixes, or looking for allies to resonate with. COVID has taken information to yet another level, to the point where some desperate people genuinely consider drinking bleach for a moment, just to make it all go away. Our natural sentry duty is now on crack--twitchy with hypervigilance.

Yes, it has got a lot more threatening in the past 15 years

So no amount of Prozac, CBT, lying-on-the-most-expensive-couches, crystal healing or essential oils will do anything but manage the symptoms of anxiety. None of them address the root causes that are tied up with natural life-on-earth, and certainly not with life-in-the-world-we've-made. They may only get you propped back up to get back to work. It's kind of what they're for. The socio-economic order demands a quick fix. We may treat individuals, but the causes are often social and environmental. The system in pressuring us to 'just cope and deal with it' creates another layer of things to be anxious about--what if I can't cope? In late stage capitalism, that's pretty much a death sentence--you don't get to earn, you have no right to live, and certainly no right to be happy.

No sane person thinks this.

In this crazy-making context, only psychopaths would feel fine. It is no sign of health to be well adjusted to a world where we are geared to scan for destruction, or to a culture, making itself sick with a media storm of things to worry about. There is no cure for life on earth in 2020.

The young people who come into my office to share their troubles, seem gripped and paralyzed by an extreme anxiety that cannot be explained by their circumstances. They are physically healthy, doing okay academically, have social networks, have families that look after them, so they get regular meals, suburban peace, comforts, treats, luxuries, even. They're not on meth but many are certainly on meds. Nevertheless, they are in an inchoate and generalized and intractable pain. If it is true that the young more readily embody society's vulnerabilities, we are in deep trouble, and these troubles can't be cured by considering them a 'disorder' to treat, or by strategizing some new, inventive coping mechanisms so their parents won't be inconvenienced by their inability to function, and so a private school's brand is not damaged.

Who functions well in the world we've made? 

Yet they are certainly "ill", because their anxiety is such that they cannot function. But who says they have to function in this mess? If we are only concerned with their ability function socially, we are betraying that our children have become some kind of totem, an emblem in the narcissistic game of who is the awesomest parent, displaying their awesomeness through getting their kid into the bestest school. And from this too, anxious students get the message that life is a battle, not just of biology, but of social rank and pecking order and invented standards of achievement. All these hand-wring, tear-squeezing students actually want is to be loved for who they are, not for the scholastic tricks they can pull.

Maybe we should listen to the wisdom of their extreme response and adapt to a wiser relationship to both natural and maladaptive anxiety. Anxiety is, after all, a sign of empathy, compassion, feeling. It says "I care, I am awake and aware. I am engaged in life." Anxiety is not to be got rid of, because living in the world is not a pathology. We cannot 'cure' a natural process. It has a place in the world and is useful to us, but must be moderated. We need to make friends with it, so to speak--understand is roots, acknowledge its usefulness, hear and respond to the dispatches from the front our troubled youth are sending us about life at the extreme end of threat.

Kids need your love not your judgement

And keep anxiety in some perspective. 3 out of 4 people do not have anxiety to the point of illness. What makes them resilient? It's useful to remember that there are fewer suicides and less depression generally when there's a war going on. This suggests that clarity and commitment to an urgent larger purpose, especially one that connects you to others,  lowers anxiety. There's research to suggest that after 9/11, morale for many mentally ill Americans actually improved because they were able to identify what was important to them and adapted their lives and relationships accordingly. Some lives do actually improve after trauma, responding with humor, resilience, and community bonding. In short, anxiety is how your society allows you to respond to it. Extreme anxiety is a compounded condition--being anxious about being anxious. The first thing Jesus usually said before he healed people was : "Be not afraid."

Whose fear is it really anyway, your or theirs?

A collective evolution of our consciousness is called for in the age of anxiety, the kind prophesied by the religious wisdom of the ages--purpose, love, connection, larger perspective.  We can define ourselves by what we choose to be afraid of. So maybe we should choose better things to fear than fear itself. Which means we need to love our anxiety-prone fellows, allow them to feel their feelings so that they need not fear feeling them. And worry a bit less about how well they adapt to a sick social order. And maybe even do what we can to create a more compassionate social order where the vulnerable are not told to 'just deal with it'.

Affirmations for Isolations

What we are feeling is Grief. And Grief can be understood and dealt with.

The Truest Christology is the Most Inclusive Christology

I am the chaplain of a high-fee, private, non-denominational boarding and day school. Its student body is broadly multicultural.

Its constitution indicates that our education of students is to be grounded in Christian Values.

One of its stated aims is ‘to encourage the exploration of students' spiritual values and their power to make ethical decisions.’

The two notions taken together appear to be straightforward enough, the sort of ‘motherhood’ statements you’d expect any school to have in its shopfront window. 

But if we look closer at how these align, questions start to emerge.

First: Is it possible to explore one’s spiritual values and make ethical decisions without reference to Christian values? Of course it is. Just ask any Buddhist, Muslim, Sikh, or Jew. If you look around, you’ll find a few in SA, and on our campus as well. It is more than likely they’d report a sense of having their own spiritual values, and the ability to make ethical decisions based on them.

On what basis, then, is the supremacy of specifically Christian values merited?

(But we’ll return to that question of Christian supremacy in a moment…)

Second: WHAT Christian values are being assumed here? All of them? Some of them—if some, which and why? Not even Christians agree on what these values are, or which are non-negotiable, hence the 1001 flavours ranging from The Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church to Shakers to 7^th Day Adventists to…(add your own here).

But let’s pick ONE Christian Value that seems to be the most basic and that therefore all who call themselves Christian should agree on. It’s expressed in Galatians 5:14--

^“For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbour as yourself.”

That’s the familiar Golden Rule. But wait, that’s Paul, not Jesus. Maybe it will be safer to go to the source. Jesus had an extra layer to that value, as expressed in Matthew 22:36-40--

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

So, it would appear to the face of it that Jesus requires a certain theism that Paul does not. Or rather, that (for Paul) to love you neighbour as yourself is how you love the Abrahamic God. The distinction here is rather a critical one, for religious freedom would include the freedom to be atheistic. Do we insist our students believe in this God, or at least predicate their education on the assumption of this God? (That is a conversation I would not care to have with, say, Buddhist or Hindu parents.) And if we do not make the insistence or assumption of this God, in what sense are we upholding Christian values? (This is a conversation I would not care to have with, say, Pentacostal or Catholic parents.)

Leaving an insistence on theism to one side, however, let us assume that by ‘a Christian Value’ we mean, as the most sound example, this ethic of the Golden Rule. But in what sense is this a Christian Value? The Golden Rule is in no sense originally Christian. There are expressions of this same ethic that predate Christianity by thousands of years. The Golden Rule is in no sense exclusively Christian. It is universally endorsed by faith and wisdom traditions ranging from the ancient Hindu, Amer-Indian, and Aboriginal traditions, to the current Tenets of the Satanic Temple (“One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.”) At best, it is a human value, also endorsed by Christianity, among many others.

On what basis, then, is the supremacy of specifically Christian values merited in our work as a school? If its core value is neither exclusive nor original, there seems to be no theological basis for its supremacy above others. 

Perhaps Christian values are culturally supreme, in that Australia identifies itself as a Christian nation? This would be fair enough, as we take government money as part of our financing. However, the Australian government has also funded Islamic schools. It has also funded Catholic schools, although technically Catholics recognise the supreme earthly authority of the Holy See. (Let us hope Catholics’ allegiance is never tested by Australia getting into a war with Vatican City… 😉)

The cultural supremacy of Christianity in Australia begs the question: in what sense is Australia a Christian nation? If we mean church-going, Australia is in no sense a Christian nation. According to Professor Hugh Mackay, only 8% of the Australian population attends ANY sort of church service regularly. Such a quantum is the very definition of a niche interest. 

If we mean a stated affiliation, Australia as a Christian nation is at best a 50-50 proposition. According to the 2016 census, while 52% self-identify as some species of Christian, 8% identify as something other than Christian, and 30% self-identify as having ‘no religion’. But since the census question was optional, the remaining 10% did not think the question worth answering. Or rather, that their choice not to disclose anything amounts either to indifference to the question itself, or to a sense that the terms of the question were specious and did not reflect their identity. Either way, it would be safe to add this 10% to 38% non-Christian responses. That leaves a statistical difference of 2%. Most quantitative research considers such a small difference to be within the realm of a margin of error.

The most important fact about the religious identity of the nation is that these numbers have been trending consistently and dramatically for the past two generations: Christianity sharply downward from 88% in 1966, Other religions up from 0.7% in 1966, and No Religion sharply upward from 0.8% in 1966 to the whopping 30% most recently. There is nothing to suggest these trends will not continue at the same steep rate. This means that by 2030, Australia will not even be a 50-50 Christian nation. Christianity is headed, seemingly inexorably, to a minority status. One is left to wonder what will be left by then of the 8% who currently attend any form of regular worship.

This will no doubt distress those who consciously identify as Christians and whose lives are given coherence by its traditions and theology. This distress will be tied up, in part, with a perceived loss of cultural capital, and the power to direct the affairs of the nation and its institutions (including schools) in light of their preferred faith. 

It may be of some comfort to Christians to return to the model of inclusivity and generosity that characterized the person on whose teaching their faith was founded. As Christian theologian Rob Bell puts it:

If the gospel isn't good news for everybody, then it isn't good news for anybody. And this is because the most powerful things happen when the church surrenders its desire to convert people and convince them to join. It is when the church gives itself away in radical acts of service and compassion, expecting nothing in return, that the way of Jesus is most vividly put on display. 

To do this, the church must stop thinking about everybody primarily in categories of in or out, saved or not, believer or nonbeliever. Besides the fact that these terms are offensive to those who are the "un" and "non", they work against Jesus' teachings about how we are to treat each other. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbour, and our neighbour can be anybody. We are all created in the image of God, and we are all sacred, valuable creations of God. Everybody matters. To treat people differently based on who believes what is to fail to respect the image of God in everyone. 

As the book of James says, "God shows no favouritism."

Non-denominational schools should show no favouritism either. To move toward a stance of religious pluralism, to include theist and non-theist alike, does not deny Christ. Rather, the widest possible inclusion upholds the very essence of his life and teaching. His crucifixion is the ultimate act of self-effacement in the service of the higher ideal of universal, self-giving love.

In this context, what would chapel and other religious services in such a school look like? They would look something like a church service for people who are broadly spiritual, but who don't identify with a particular faith or denomination. Broadly, they would look like religious humanism, and would be suited to a school setting where we would want to encourage and enable participation in an ongoing exploration of the spiritual side to human nature. It would not tell anyone what doctrines to believe.  Rather than the certainty of answers, we would keep re-engaging with the age-old questions and watching how our (provisional) answers evolve and change as we experience new things and encounter new writings in both the arts and sciences. We would not necessarily throw out the baby of religious language (grace, peace, sacredness) out with the bathwater of exclusivity, but we don't wish to exclude anyone whom that language either triggers, or doesn't help. As the reality of our student body reflects the broad cultural and religious diversity of the nation, chapels would attempt to include people of all cultural backgrounds, religious faiths, spiritual persuasions and world views, as a place to be open to each other and to respect each other.

This could be what we mean by ‘Christian values’.

The Numbers Game

At our November 2019 AGM, it was officially noted that our membership numbers are about 10% down on ten years ago, and that we are bringing in less revenue. It was suggested in the ensuing discussion that one of the reasons for the decline in revenue (i.e. tithing and donations by the members and adherents) is not only that there are 10% fewer members, but also that our members are less wealthy than the ones we used to attract. And that the reason we are attracting fewer wealthy people is because our messaging is too liberal (translation in Inglese: the Minister is a 'lefty', so it's my fault).

Leaving aside, for a moment, the multiple variables that could account for and contribute to apparently declining numbers and revenue (lower wage growth, SA’s nationally high un- and under-employment, the rise in the number of working families in the congregation, the gig economy, Sunday trading hours, mortality, families moving interstate where the jobs are…I could go on ALL DAY), I thought a dose of historical perspective on our numbers and demographics might be instructive.

Brown (2002) et. al., have well established the general 45 degree downward trend in church attendance and formal affiliation since WW1, a century ago. This average includes all denominations and anglosphere nations. So the struggle to keep numbers from sinking has been like King Canute before the flood, ordering the tide to stop. The main game in the 20^th century, and now the 21^st, is to maintain, rather than to grow, or at least to manage decline. But how has this particular church fared after 160+ years, beginning as it did during the worldwide high tide level of church membership and affiliation in the mid 19^th century? Rather better than most, it seems.

The tide of history is going only ONE way

I’m grateful to a scholarly article by David Hilliard in the Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia from (1983), whose scholarly research uncovered some interesting facts:

• ·       In the 1881 census, 747 SA residents described themselves as Unitarians, about the size of the SA Jewish community, but smaller than almost all other orthodox denominations;

• ·       However, the church itself had only 122 ‘subscribers’ (i.e. members) in 1881;

• ·       With so many ‘Unitarians’ in the state, why weren’t we better subscribed then? At the time, we were unique in that we had only one accredited Minister in the colony, and were the regarded with contempt by many more pious Christians sects. So even then, we were understaffed, and a bit suspect;

Rev. JC Woods, our first and only Minister from 1855-1889

• ·       As the 19^th century wore on, however, other orthodox Christian denominations liberalized their theology and encouraged freedom of thought. So as they became more like us, there was less reason to leave the church of their upbringing and join us;

• ·       Two key demographic features of the UCCSA at the beginning of the twentieth century: the congregation, though closely knit, was both elderly and (ahem...) 'heavily inter-related by marriage';

• ·       Old members died and younger member did not come to replace them. By 1916, during WW1 when most men of military age had enlisted, services were sometimes attended by less than 20;

• ·       These conditions of low membership and age were reversed dramatically in the 20s and 30s by Rev George Hale, whose tenure saw an influx of young attenders. He was a charismatic, eloquent, and provocative preacher, and embraced the new communication technology of the time—radio—and regularly broadcast addresses, capturing people who had no previous connection with the core families of the church. By 1929, one service had an attendance of 300, the largest in 25 years;

• 

  When radio was new...

  
  

• ·       But by 1934 this media-driven peak had passed, and the actual subscribers (members) remained remarkably stable at about 100 (i.e. about where we are now);

• ·       Why then have we never achieved steady and sustained growth? Hilliard points to isolation as a key factor. We have been isolated from other churches—we have never had formal contact with other denominations in the city. Our ministers are isolated from the geographical centres of the denomination, with little or no opportunity to exchange ideas with colleagues. We have, as a result, inherited a reflex to be inward-looking and sluggish. As late as 1959 the Minister, the Rev Colin Gibson said: “It is indeed difficult to maintain freshness and enthusiasm, with no one other than ourselves to engender it…the same voice in the pulpit, the same faces in the congregation. It may make for closeness, but the spark that strikes from other minds and sets alight our own, is absent.”

Isolated church

• ·       Hilliard also points to historical documents that indicate the conventionally cerebral approach to religion has done us no favours. In 1895, a review described a congregation of 50 or so (about the same attendance we have today), as being listless, and the services “ dull and inexpressibly dreary”. Other reviewers found the sermons heavy-going, with few concessions to those less interested in intellectual matters;

• ·       Hilliard observes that the SA colony has always been a place where fluidity of religious belief was the norm, and that there has always been overlapping in both denominational affiliation and attendance. Significant numbers were Unitarians not for a lifetime, but for a period of their lives, a sort of temporary resting-place, before moving back to orthodoxy or into profounder scepticism. Multiple affiliations (with Quakers, Congregationalists, etc.) have been the historical norm, so there was never a tradition of having one single church allegiance as the norm;

Conclusion: we are now exactly where we have always been in numerical terms, with maybe one significant expansion during the tenure of George Hale. So before we go trying to somehow lure the fabulously wealthy back into membership, or belabour liberal ministry for liberal messaging, or blame leadership or lack of it, or blame (again) the poorer members for their poverty, maybe get out into the wider community. Beat the isolation that has been our historical legacy, engage new SA people through whatever communication technology we can afford and master, be less afraid of engaging people with emotion, and be a little less in love with getting an intellect foot-massage in services. 

Can the culture of institutions be changed? You bet it can. It happens all the time, and it must change here. For there is only so long before we can keep the rising water from carrying this church away. Given Brown’s trend, we should be below 50 members and 20 attenders. We’re double that, and that’s a HUGE achievement in this day and age. But it doesn’t happen by magic, and the forces of cultural inertia, both within and without the church, are strong.

The good news is that we have the best religious product in town, especially for those who don’t ‘do’ other churches. Go out and get’em in.

A Ghost Story

Now that I'm on a part-time footing at my church ministry, I haven't even been through the doors since Jan 26th, when I did my last service under my FT agreement. I'm doing roughly one per month until further notice. But because my attention has been mainly elsewhere, it feels so over now, like I'm a million miles away, instead of three blocks.

I had forgotten something in the office, or I needed some material--I'm not sure which. On an evening around dusk, I rode my bike there to get whatever it was I was missing. 

And I discovered that the strangest thing had happened to the place.

The place has transformed into a thriving, diverse sort of ….village, with the church itself at the heart of it. There were so many kids, some were playing baseball (on a team complete with uniforms), some were in a kind of cadet program (ambling about in smart dress uniforms). Familiar elders, some dead, some living, were walking together under trees talking earnestly and discretely in pairs and small groups. There were food trucks around. A band was playing somewhere. Many ages, many activities--rich, vibrant, diverse, colourful, yet everything somehow belonged here, a single organism  in the twilight, just doing its collective thing. 

I went into the church, which was having some sort of evening service which had not started yet. The place was packed. I sat at the back as I tend to do when I'm not leading a service. Lights were dim, and there was the sport of hushed expectancy that one feels when a curtain is about to rise in a theatre. But I felt I should not stay, that what was to come had nothing to do with me, and rather than feel utterly alienated, I left before it started.

I made my way back to my bike, through thronging clusters of folks, and now--as in the church, as on my way to the church--I realized not a single person recognized me. They were not unfriendly or avoidant. There was eye contact, some nods of welcome, but not a single flicker of recognition. I had a sudden flash that it felt the same as when I had first arrived at this church 23 years ago, a stranger. Not unwelcome, just not known. In my end is my beginning.

I was a part of this once, I wanted to shout at them. I didn't make all this happen all by myself, but I sure was part of what led to this flourishing. You're here because it's here, and it's here because I was here. Goddam it, why does no one recognize me? The feeling was not wounded pride, but terror--seeing the world like Clarence the angel makes George Bailey see it in It's a Wonderful Life--a world into which you've never been born, and your single absence has made it utterly different. 

"One person's life touches so many others..."

Was I really here all those years or was that all a dream? I mean, the years I remember spending there felt real, just as this utter strangeness and stranger-ness felt real. Oh, wait...

And from this dream, I woke to soundless dark. It was only the sound of Susan's breathing next to me that made waking reality take shape again--our bed, our ceiling, our curtains wafting, my own heart beating. Life.

The psychodynamics of life transitions are not to be taken lightly, no matter how busy you get, how driven-forward you're required to be. They remind you that everything comes to an end, even you. And that no matter how intimately tied to things you feel, it all has to be let go of eventually. No--you won't be remembered specifically. But you will have been of use, and part of the unfolding web of life that connects past and future worlds. 

The church and the school where I'm chaplain had obviously merged together in my unconscious. I was a ghost in both, seeing it as the departed--if consciousness persists after death--must see the world. Full of familiar places, people, and full of what you can see has grown out of what you knew and who you were. You look at a house and you think--"Hey, that was where I used to live. What are these others doing there?"

When you visit such places, they are called 'old haunts' and they are called that because what haunts them is you. Life has moved on, evolved, and it is only you that are stuck in, fixated on, an idea of the past. Which no longer exists, though it still seems real to you.

The Bardo can only be depicted as a kind of virtual reality, as in this VR experience of Lincoln in the Bardo

Maybe the Zen Buddhists are onto something with their notion of the Bardo-- a period between one life and the next, in which the unskillful can become stuck as ghostly spirits, and never merge with Eternal Love. The skillful have a certain amount of time to come to terms with the fact that they are indeed gone from this world. And when they do, they are released from despair and self-blame, ready to be born anew. 

A prayer:

Oh Thou, maker (and shaker) of worlds within and without,

May I release what has been, that I may be reborn in what's to come. 

May those my life has touched and enabled, flourish as they will.

May I know true entrusting.