The media got involved at the first wedding I performed after receiving my licence as a newly ordained deacon. It was my sister Elizabeth’s wedding, and it was a tasteful ceremony carried out at St. Peter’s Anglican Church in Churchill, Ontario, where I was serving a summer charge. I was mortified, however, to pick up a copy of a Toronto daily (the now-defunct Toronto Telegram) the following Monday and read a report under the heading BROTHER MARRIES SISTER.
During my last summer at Big Trout Lake in 1950, on one occasion the groom failed to show up at his wedding. The missionary, Rev. Leslie Garrett, had told me to be sure to come because it was to be a double wedding and there would be a colourful send-off at the end when all the men of the band would line up on either side of the path as the couples left the church and fire their shotguns off into the sky in a grand salute. Frankly, I was a little nervous about this part of the celebrations because, for people who lived most of their lives by hunting, these particular Cree seemed very unlucky in the number of injuries they did both to themselves and to others through accidental discharges of their weapons. But I resolved to go anyway.
Two brides showed up, but only one groom. We waited for at least a half-hour, and in the end I felt so sorry for the woman without a man that I would have liked to volunteer one of the other young men present. At last someone was sent to find out what had happened to the missing man. It turned out he had fallen asleep and forgotten that the event was set for that afternoon. He was too chagrined and ashamed to show his face that day, and his girlfriend was asked to sit down while the other bride was married. Most girls would have been insulted to the point of rejecting such a sleepy suitor entirely, but the pair were married the following Saturday. I’m happy to report that no one was injured when the shotguns finally were fired for them.
The Anglican service of baptism, intended mainly for infants of very tender age—the Book of Common Prayer actually says “as soon as possible after birth”—always has as its Gospel reading the passage where Jesus bids the disciples to “suffer the little children to come unto me.” Although church attendance today has suffered dramatic declines, for very good reasons, many young parents still want the traditional baptism for their babies. The principle seems to be that once the baby has had all its shots against temporal diseases, it should then be inoculated against any possible spiritual harm. Ironically, the process for many years now seems to have served as an immunization against ever catching Christianity. Of course, the other motivation is the family party afterwards, or it may simply be done to please the doting grandparents.
One morning around 1960, as a consequence of the flood of newcomers taking up residence in the West Hill region, the parents of sixteen children came for the sacrament of baptism. Their many relatives and friends added significantly to the already large regular congregation. Several of the more influential parishioners glared at me when I first came in because they had been forced out of their usual pews by the invasion of these strangers. As I strode into the centre aisle to begin the various prayers for the “remission of sin by spiritual regeneration” of the assorted babies and toddlers before me, one three-year-old decided to make a break for it, running down the centre aisle with his father in hot pursuit.
The escapee was returned, but not without howls of outrage. This unfortunately made the rest of the baptizands apprehensive that something might be lurking ahead to cause them pain. The first set of parents approached the font and handed me their baby while holding their other toddler by the hand. Normally I never had any trouble with small babies, holding them very firmly in one arm the way we were taught to do, and pouring a small amount of tepid water on the forehead with the other hand. This baby, however, yelled bloody murder the moment I took him. I tried the usual technique: smile sweetly at the baby, speak as loudly as possible and give it back as swiftly as you can while not looking too relieved. Now it was his older brother’s turn, and I made the mistake of picking the child up, trying to handle him as one would an oversized infant. He screamed and struggled, delivering some very energetic kicks to my midsection. The entire group of little ones had now joined in and begun wailing loudly.
By the time I had fought my way through the entire batch, I was soaked, my preaching scarf was hanging askew, and my patience had almost given way to something else. I then needed to deliver the sermon, repeating the passages about childhood innocence I had so unsuspectingly prepared the night before.
Later that afternoon I was having a brief nap when I was awakened by a phone call from a woman I had never heard of or met asking whether she and her husband could have their baby “done” soon. In weariness I couldn’t help myself and said, “And how would you like it done, madam? Well, medium or rare?” She hung up at once.
Those who have read Water into Wine will know something of my own understanding of what baptism actually means and how it can be seen as so much more than a churchy ritual of convenience. Were I to be back in a parish today, I would present it quite differently than in that bygone era. One thing is certain: there would be a great deal less said about sin and much more about the acknowledgement of the presence of the divine spark in every newborn child of God.
Certainly the most sacred service for most Christians is the Eucharist, also known as the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion or Mass. The risks for clergy are many: losing one’s place in the prayer book, dropping the chalice, or running out of bread and wine. One morning at St. Anne’s Church in the heart of Toronto, I nearly electrocuted a parishioner. I had walked across the carpet of the chancel area several times and had unknowingly picked up an impressive charge of static electricity. I learned later that I should have discharged it by touching the metal radiator before handing the cup to anyone. Not knowing this, however, I blithely offered the cup to the first gentleman on his knees, and watched as a spark leapt between the cup and his lip. It was audible to the entire group kneeling at the altar rail, and badly frightened the poor man as well as myself.
One thing you are taught as an Anglican minister is that any bread or wine which has been consecrated for Holy Communion and has not been used must be consumed by the clergy at the close of the service. In order not to run out, I would frequently overestimate the size of the crowd and have quite a lot to deal with at the end. My father, when he had his own parish in his late-in-life career as an Anglican parish priest, had his own ideas about leftover bread: he would simply throw it out on the lawn for the birds well after the service, believing it did more good that way. Eating leftover bread or wafers is one thing, and can be at times an embarrassment, but drinking any remaining wine after the chalice has been passed around to two hundred or more people and contains small wet crumbs from the bread the communicants missed is enough to make a person gag. This practice is seldom thoroughly discussed or even mentioned anywhere. Fortunately for the clergy, the practice of drinking from the common cup has changed somewhat in this day and age of fears of pandemics, but it is still a contentious issue in some parishes.
Outwardly, it appeared at that time as if my parish career was proceeding just as it should. All the external marks of success were in place. St. Margaret’s-in-the-Pines was one of the few parishes in the diocese that had more men than women in the pews on any given Sunday morning. Inwardly, however, trouble was fermenting. Issues were arising, both theological and personal, that one day would have to be squarely faced.
Sometimes I am asked whether I would like to be back in a parish ministry today and, if so, what I would do differently. A full answer would again require a book-length treatise, but a few points can sketch at least a general direction. If possible, I would simultaneously have a teaching or writing post so that my preaching and teaching could be quite financially independent. Put bluntly, it’s very hard, if not impossible, to speak out freely from a pulpit when those who pay the bulk of your salary and the church maintenance fees are sitting in the front row each Sunday. I would also initiate a parallel church for agnostics, atheists and seekers of every kind. There would be no formal prayers, sermons or lectures at such a gathering. Rather, it would be a place and time for honest questioning and debate.
My understanding and experience of prayer have evolved gradually in the process of living in the real world and not that of the cloister or the seminary. Whereas, like most people,