In the “parallel church” there might be readings, not just from Holy Scriptures (of various faiths) but from so-called secular writers, poets and journalists. The music would be as varied as the “congregation” decided. There would be a wide use of modern media in a spectrum of presentations—and always with time for feedback or discussion. When I was at St. Margaret’s, I wrote an entire Sunday school curriculum based upon a series of major films dramatizing the life of St. Paul. The teachers and children loved it. In parish ministry, as everywhere else in religion, it is time for some truly radical change.
Harvest home and Thanksgiving would not be the only occasions where our total dependency on and “interbeing” (to use a Buddhist term) with the whole of the natural world would be acknowledged and made the focus of prayer, readings and meditation. One thing I have learned from my own experience as well as from my research into pre-Christian or Pagan beliefs is the centrality of the Creation to a full and balanced spirituality. When the early Christians gained temporal power through the conversion of Emperor Constantine and then gradually proceeded to denigrate and destroy all that Paganism held dear, they turned away from the deep connection religion had always had with Mother Earth and the cycles of the cosmos at the same time. Literalism too played its part, as the whole myth about God cursing the earth and Adam’s destiny in it was read as a fact of history. Part of the vast environmental crisis we face right now is due to the Western world’s inheritance of an attitude towards nature of negativity and indifference. You can find it even in the hymns we sing in church. “Joy to the World,” one of the best-known of all Christmas carols, for example, in stanza three celebrates belief in the “Curse of Adam” upon what we call “the environment.” The verse says in part, “far as the curse is found,” and repeats it three times for emphasis. At best the natural world is regarded as there to be exploited and used as we see fit. All religions need to rediscover the reverence and awe that link us once again to the womb out of which we come and that nourishes our inner spirit as nothing else can.
On my eightieth birthday we had the great privilege of visiting Zion Canyon National Park in southwestern Utah. Our hiking path through the valley followed the Virgin River, alongside the canyon heights, which were named by the early Mormon settlers as the Altar of Sacrifice and the Thrones of the Three Patriarchs. As we stood and gazed mutely at the soaring rock walls, I had a deeper, more awesome awareness of the reality and the power of the presence of God than I had ever known before or have experienced since in any cathedral or in the presence of even some of the holiest personalities I have met. Lorne Greene, the famous Canadian TV personality, put it very simply but perhaps best in his recording of the song “Oh, the place where I worship, is the wide open spaces, built by the hand of the Lord.” Many millions today can say amen to that.
6
LIVING MY
FATHER’S DREAM
MOST OF US, particularly when we have had some measure of success in life, are reluctant to reveal or discuss our weaknesses, failures or defeats. Certainly this is so for me. Yet as Jung and others have made clear, facing one’s shadow with all its latent strength as well as its more negative powers is essential to one’s individuation and growth towards greater maturity. As the great “doctor of the soul” points out in Modern Man in Search of a Soul, anything of substance must of necessity have or throw a shadow. Evil walks pari passu with the good.
There were a couple of major events that, if not necessarily failures, at any rate highlighted a need for a radical change of direction in my personal narrative. Some aspects of these are necessarily painful, but the ultimate meaning and outcome were enormously fruitful and liberating. There was no voice from above, no heavenly vision, no sudden inner light, but throughout even the most difficult, yes, even the darkest hours, the realization of a divine Presence close by me and within made it possible to carry on. And I discovered that coming to terms with one’s shadow, including the darkness of disappointment, depression or loneliness, can be the prelude to a release of fresh creativity and of deeper joy.
Each of the events about to be described is connected to the others by a common thread: a hitherto largely unconscious bondage and subservience to the parental matrix, with all its many-sided demands. In particular, in the early 1960s, when I was a married man with children of my own, the rector of a large and thriving parish, and a budding lecturer at Wycliffe College in the University of Toronto, I was still thoroughly in thrall to the authority of my father. Just as my parents had chosen a career as a minister for me from the moment of my conception, so too it was they who had first suggested that I apply for the post of rector at my first parish, St. Margaret’s-in-the-Pines. As mentioned earlier, they had even picked out the evangelical Anglican church I would attend when I went to Oxford!
It was of course no accident that West Hill, where the church of St. Margaret’s was located, was only about a twenty-minute drive from my parents’ Scarborough home. They began to attend the services, even Bible study groups and other mid-week activities. Sometimes they would show up at the rectory early on Saturday morning and begin tidying up the garage or our other casual belongings in the vicinity in order to preserve the proper dignified image for any chance visitors or passersby. Worse, they interfered frequently with Mary’s routines and disciplines for our two children at that time, arriving without warning just when they were being put to bed or handing out candy even after hearing they were not to have any. As they say in England about such unwanted or misdirected activities, “they meant well.” That’s a warning, not a compliment. The truth is that I was not as outspoken or as direct as I ought to have been in warding off or stopping the interference.
In fact, in retrospect I see that I was not yet prepared to face what my unconscious was screaming in my dreams and in a general sense of inner tension and unease. Things in the parish were going very well, but I always felt under the strain of not doing enough. My father would ask from time to time, “How many conversions have there been?” And there were signs of trouble in the marriage as well. Mary had reasons enough, but my failure fully to understand what lay behind the many outbursts only made them worse. When there were the inevitable arguments and quarrels, I would piously blame myself for lack of grace and so resorted to prayer instead of looking deeper for the root causes.
Against this backdrop, as the struggle to build the congregation continued at the same time as the planning for the erection of a new church building was proceeding apace, my father had begun a fresh campaign to persuade me to return to academic life and obtain a Ph.D., or rather the Oxford D.Phil. I had already spent nine years at university preparing for my ministry, so the thought of at least two, possibly three more years of slogging completely left me cold. I had fear, not of being unable to do it, but of ending up in total poverty. My years of study even on scholarships had not been conducive to a bank balance worthy of the name, and while the Anglican Church may be generous with titles and other honours, it was not at that time very supportive where clergy salaries were concerned.
At the same time, I knew that my father’s vision for his firstborn was that one day I would teach as a professor at the bastion