A Modern Anglican

June 6, 2010

Rev. Amy Cousineau

Thank you for inviting me back to talk to you today.  You Unitarians challenge me.  The last time I was here I was very concerned about doing a good job, about getting it “right” because of my deep esteem for you and for my friends Linda Reith and Betty Bean Kennedy.  I’m feeling a bit less stressed about that this morning, but today’s topic has caused me to think carefully and deeply about what I believe, about why I am a Christian.

The topic at the top of this morning’s order of service is “Being a Modern Anglican.”  I have to admit to you from the outset that I can’t speak with any authority about what a modern Anglican is.  What I have to say certainly does not represent any official position of the Anglican Church.  All I can speak about in truth is the being part of the topic.  My own being, my own journey, and where I find myself at this time in my life.  That includes being a priest of the Anglican Church of Canada, accountable to the Bishop of Niagara.

I am an itinerant priest, filling in where I’m needed on Sunday mornings.  I meet a lot of Anglicans and work at a lot of different churches.  I preside at services from the Book of Common Prayer, the basic structure & theology of which dates from the 16th century.  It was last updated in 1962.  I lead services from our “modern” Book of Alternative Services which was published in 1985.  And I lead Celtic and other services which have been written for today, for the specific congregations in which they are used.  I speak to people who want the church to be exactly like it was when they were growing up, or when their parents were growing up, and also to people who describe themselves as “emerging Christians” or “progressive Christians,” people who are questioning everything they have been taught, asking searching questions about the life and divinity of Jesus, and rethinking what it means to be church.  Within the worldwide Anglican communion there is great dissension about how literally we should read the bible, centred mostly around the role of homosexual people in the church.  So what is it to be an Anglican today?  I don’t know.  But one of the good things about the Anglican church is that we have a long history of disagreement among ourselves and a great tolerance for differences.  We have a culture that, for the most part, encourages questioning and asking those questions out loud.  Anglicans encourage and support personal spiritual journeys and the exploration of spiritual questions that comes with that.

It’s a bit ironic that I come to you on this particular Sunday.  Last week I was at St. Paul’s church in Shelburne.  It was Trinity Sunday – a Sunday that is the dread of almost every preacher.  How to unravel the mystery of the Trinity, Father Son and Holy Spirit OR Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier – one God, but also three.  My sermon fell naturally into two parts.  I did a bit of an explanation of how the doctrine of the Trinity came to be in the early Christian church and how it was confirmed at a church council in 325 CE.  And then I talked about my own beliefs about the Trinity.  I accept our Trinitarian theology.  For me, it’s part of the Christian story, the dance of Christian experience.  It’s what I grew up with and what has been affirmed in my adult faith journey.  But I don’t care all that much about the history and theology of the Trinity.  What I care about is the idea that God is in relationship with God-self, and that within God there is a dance.  For me, the mystery of the Trinity adds a wonderful depth to the God I worship and relate to.

The description of my talk for today which was in your newsletter was written by Linda Reith.  She said that I would talk about my “journey in and out and back again to the Christian community of faith.”  I loved the feel of that description.  I sounded like a dance to me – in and out and back again.  Throughout my life I have danced with the Christian faith – in and out and back again.  And I have absorbed and treasured and told the Christian story as found in the Hebrew scriptures and the Gospels and letters of the Christian writings.

To me, for reasons I can’t fully articulate to myself or to you, the ritual of the Christian Eucharist is vitally important to my being.  Not just to my spiritual being, but to my whole being, to my life.  The Eucharist is also known as Communion or Holy Communion.  It’s the part of our service where we share bread and wine to commemorate the life and ministry of Jesus, and to remember his death on the cross.  Roman Catholic and most Anglican churches celebrate the Eucharist weekly at their Sunday services.  Anglicans share the wine from a common cup, and I like it when we use one loaf of bread rather than individual wafers.  For me Eucharist is communion – sharing food together at table invokes the sacred and creates community.  Communion is both real and symbolic nourishment – by eating the bread and drinking the wine we nourish both our bodies and our souls.  For me, the ritual of the Eucharist, the dance of coming to the altar to receive the bread and wine, repeated each week, is the centrepiece of the service and the centrepiece of my faith.  Perhaps this is why I felt called to become a priest – so that I could not only receive the bread and wine, but have a central role in preparing it.

I grew up in the Anglican church.  We were an “every Sunday go to church” family.  I found Sunday School boring.  Sitting in the pew with my parents was frustrating because I could never really see what was going on at the front.  In those days girls weren’t allowed to assist the priest during the service, so I joined the Junior Choir. That way I could sit up near the altar and see what was happening.  While I was watching the action at the front I can’t remember ever having a single thought of becoming a priest myself.  This was the 50s and 60s.  It simply wasn’t an option for women.  (The Anglican Church of Canada began ordaining women in 1976.)

Like most of us who were brought up in the church, when I went away to University in my late teens, I drifted away from church.  In 1971 I married a Roman Catholic man.  We were married in the Anglican church, but after that we didn’t attend.  We were too busy launching our careers, buying a house, and travelling.  We thought we didn’t need church, that it was irrelevant for us.  Looking back, though, I can see that this was a spiritually arid period of my life.  Although we were making “progress” and doing all the things society and my parents expected of us, something wasn’t right with me. 

In 1978 we were pregnant with our first child.  For purely pragmatic reasons I decided that we should start attending the Roman Catholic church.  (Fred was teaching for the Separate School Board and I thought it would be a good move for us to have the baby baptized Catholic.)  But something happened for me there.  Every week it seemed as if there was something I could take home from the service and chew over.  Spiritually I began to come back to life.  The baby, our daughter Elise, was born and baptized and we continued to attend church.  But I was feeling left out.  As a non-Catholic, I was not welcomed at communion.  I wanted us to be united as a family in worship, so I took instruction and was received into the Roman Catholic church.  Finally I could be a full member and receive communion.

We became an “every Sunday go to mass” family.  I was somehow able to put aside my concerns about the church’s position on abortion and the role of women, because I was being spiritually fed and I enjoyed the sense of community.  But after six or seven years a new priest came to our parish.  He was authoritarian and misogynist.  After a few months I found that the only thing being fed at mass was my anger!  And so I stopped going.

I spent a few months without a spiritual home.  But I gradually realized that I needed a place to worship, and a spiritual community.  My friends Linda and Betty, both of whom I really respected, spoke glowingly about the Unitarian Fellowship, as it was called then.  So I thought I would try it out.  This would have been about 1988 or so, and the Fellowship was in its previous location on Bristol Street.  Betty and Linda were delighted to see me!  I felt very welcomed and included.  But as I think back to the services I attended, what I remember is that there would be a brief ritual at the beginning and then a fairly long talk, and then people, mostly men, would stand up and debate with the speaker.  After a few months it became apparent that I wasn’t getting what I needed, so I reluctantly resumed my search for a place that felt sacred to me.

I decided to try the Anglican Church, the church of my childhood.  This was, in part, a pragmatic decision because St. Matthias Anglican church was within walking distance of my house.  The first time I attended a service there I felt like I had come home.  It felt familiar and comfortable.  I liked the people and the preaching and the way they did Eucharist.  This turned out to be a place that I would grow in faith and in spirit and in skill over about ten years.  We experimented with different ways to worship, different affirmations of faith, different music.  We asked questions and sometimes argued with one another and struggled to keep the place afloat financially.  It was community in the Christian tradition.  For me it was centred around the Eucharist and the Christian and Hebrew stories.

For those ten years while I grew in faith, I also took on lots of responsibilities at St. Matthias.  I was a helper at services, I preached occasionally, I did liturgical dance, and I had a lot of leadership responsibilities.  Around 1994 or 95 I began to feel a call to do more in the church, to take on a new role, to make my living by working for the church.  I wrestled with this call for almost five years, doing every kind of theological gymnastics you can imagine to convince God and myself that there was no reason to give up my good paying job with pension and benefits, and to disrupt my comfortable life.  But the call didn’t go away.  For those five years I was dancing in the tension of feeling pulled towards a new kind of life and at the same time pulling back into what was familiar and known.  A kind of circling around while leaning back.

Finally, in 1999 I quit my job and in September I began to study Theology at Trinity College at U of T.  In 2002 I graduated with a Masters of Divinity degree and I was ordained by the Diocese of Niagara.  I was a parish priest, in two different churches, for seven years.  Now I am what I call a “freelance priest.”  I am a spiritual director, meeting one-on-one with people to accompany and guide them on their spiritual journeys.  I preside at weddings, funerals and celebrations of life.  I offer spiritual care to palliative patients.  And I fill in at churches on Sunday mornings.  Life is good.  My spirit is soaring.

Once I was no longer committed to one specific church every Sunday morning, Linda asked me if I would be willing to speak at your services occasionally.  I told her I would be delighted!  And so I came to you last December.  In the Christian church it was the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the time of waiting for the birth of Jesus, the four Sundays before Christmas.  And so I chose to speak about “Waiting in the Darkness ... For the Light.”  I very much enjoyed preparing the talk because that exercise forced me to think about the Christian story, and beyond the Christian story.  What turned out to be the best part for me, though, was the discussion we had afterwards here in this room.  It was such a treat to engage with people about the ideas I had presented!  Some folks resonated with my personal story and shared parts of their own journey.  Others reflected on the ideas I had presented and shared their thoughts.  In that discussion I was affirmed and challenged and given much food for thought.  You may not be aware of how unusual it is for a preacher to have people actually engage in discussion of what has been presented.  When I go other places to preach, after the service I generally get a quick handshake and a one line comment, “Good sermon” or “enjoyed the sermon,” or occasionally a substantive one-liner like “I never thought about the Trinity in that way.”  So your discussion after the service last December was a gift to me, one I look forward to receiving again today.

Earlier I touched on my experience of the Unitarian Fellowship 20+ years ago.  I don’t know to what extent my recollection is clouded in the mists of time, but it seems to me that your service today is quite different than it was then.  I am so impressed by the high priority you now give to ritual and with the structure of your service.  I believe that expressing and enacting the joys and concerns of the community are critically important.  I love it that children have a real place in the service and are valued for their contributions.  (When I was here last time they gave us the gift of their music making.)  The opportunity to sing and to listen to a meditation are important elements in spiritual experience and growth.  I think, if I were a 30 something looking for a spiritual home today, my experience with the Unitarians would be very different than it was 20 years ago.  And my whole life might have turned out differently!!

And so, those are some snippets of the story of my dance in and with the Christian faith and the Christian church.  Of my dance that goes “in and out and back again.”  That’s the best I can do today to tell you what it means to me to be a “modern Anglican.” For others it means something different.  And that’s OK.

 Amen.  Blessed Be.