1. Reading. Yes, that’s right. Somehow after another day of Zooming, all I have energy for is to plop myself in front of yet another Netflix series. And so I want to finish Miriam Toews’ novel and begin to attack the backlog on my bedside table.
2. Getting up early on a Thursday morning. Although I’m the furthest thing there is from being a morning person, one of the weekly routines I look forward to is the 7:15 a.m. mass followed by breakfast (one boiled egg and two and a half pieces of toast) with a faithful band of parishioners, presided over by 98-year-old Professor Blissett, our chief butterer of toast.
3. Celebrating the liturgy with (more than four other) living, breathing humans. I want to hear the sounds, see the faces and shake the hands.
4. Commending my dear colleague Father Robert McCord to God’s care with a glorious requiem. Robert died suddenly in March and we are waiting for the time when we can fulfill his wish for a high mass with all the liturgical trimmings.
5. Visiting a library. “Medicine for the Soul,” said the inscription above the earliest library we know of, from the 1200s BCE. My soul needs some of this medicine.
6. Getting “just because” exercise. My commute from home to church is roughly ten paces. I’m looking forward to the time when going to meetings and running errands and going to my weekly duplicate bridge game gets me on my feet or on my bike.
7. Hugging my mom. (And she will tell you I’m not the huggiest person in the world. And she is correct. But still!)
8. Having lunch with some dear friends. I realize I have taken for granted the simple act of making a lunch date and catching up over a meal. This is a time for fasting from the way in which human beings form and sustain family, friendships and community – with food and drink. (Yes, “Do this,” said Jesus. And so we shall. And in person!)
9. Sailing. My real “happy place” is a summer property that has been in my family for almost a century. There I sail and read and play board games, and Mary Lou and I and my folks get to re-connect with our two adult daughters. I’m hoping (perhaps against hope – we will see) to get there in August and just “be.”
10. Discovering what God has been up to in the Church and in my life. I don’t for a moment subscribe to the theology that God has inflicted this pandemic upon the world to teach us something. But I do subscribe to the theology that, through this extraordinary time, God is doing something new. In the Church we are seeing creativity, courage, resilience and lots of curiosity from outside our walls. In my own life, this has been a time of creativity in writing, practicing the organ (something I haven’t done for a few years) and composing music. Things I simply wouldn’t have “got around to” if all of a sudden everything predictable had not been turned on its head.

I have been very fortunate through this pandemic – much more fortunate than most. I have the security of continued employment, comfortable shelter, plenty of food and company and support, and ministry I love. This pandemic has not been the “stay at home and read books” moment I had imagined. But I am thankful, from my admittedly comfortable perch, to be able to reflect on what really is important. Yes, absence does make my heart grow fonder.

The post My Top 10 list when this is all over appeared first on The Toronto Anglican.

When I finished walking the 800 km Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in early June 2017, I was convinced I would never do it again. It was hard and gruelling and I was relieved to be done. But now, if given the opportunity, I’d go again tomorrow. So when the editor of The Anglican asked me to offer 10 tips for anyone planning to go on a pilgrimage this summer, I jumped at the opportunity. Here’s my list:

1. Pack lightly. I took two pairs of clothes – today’s and tomorrow’s (which was also yesterday’s). It is amazing how little we actually need to survive day by day, especially when we have to haul it all under our own steam.
2. Train for the inclines. On the first day of my Camino experience, I climbed up the Pyrenees from France into Spain. No Toronto hills prepared me for that.
3. Train for the declines. Walking downhill, especially with a pack on your back, puts a lot of force on your limbs and joints.
4. Yes, it’s true. Downhills are worse than uphills. I didn’t believe it before I experienced it. I came to dread the steep downhills of the Camino. On the first day, after getting to the heights of the Pyrenees, I had to walk all the way down again. It was painful.
5. Go alone. True, I’m an introvert so I crave time alone. But being alone allowed me to be open to the stranger. I had holy conversations with people from around the world whom I still stay in touch with. (Ask me about my Baptist friends from New Zealand who own a lingerie store. I met Deborah in the men’s washroom.) And holy conversations with strangers that lasted 10 or 15 minutes and whom I will never hear from again.
6. Prepare to get cosy. The thing I feared most was sleeping in rooms full of strangers, but it turned out to be not as big of a deal as I feared. Your sense of privacy and self change, but everyone is in it together. (Still, bring ear plugs!)
7. Expect nothing. I went on the Camino hoping to gather material to write a book. It didn’t happen because I quickly realized that that intention was getting in the way of experiencing things in the moment. Just go.
8. It’s the journey, not the destination. The journey (for me) took five and a half weeks. Arriving in Santiago took an hour or so. The pilgrimage is just that – a journey.
9. But it’s also the destination. When I finally arrived at the cathedral in Santiago, I felt nothing (except sore feet). Nothing. And then a friend took my photo and I said, “I’m going to send this home to my family.” And I began to weep uncontrollably.
10. When you are finished the pilgrimage, you haven’t reached your destination. My pilgrimage started at my front door with my wife taking my photo as I walked up the street to catch public transit to the airport. And it “ended” when she took a photo of me walking down our street from the subway. Front door to front door. But it hasn’t really ended. I’m still walking the “Camino,” which is “The Way.”

When I look at this list, I realize it isn’t just a list of tips for a pilgrimage. It’s a list of tips for life. We have too much stuff. (You should see our storage room in the basement. Ugh!) We experience times in life when we are heading upward and times when we are careening downward, and they are both challenging – but going downhill is worse. We can easily close ourselves off from the unexpected encounter with a stranger; surely our phones and headphones and social media are doing this all the time. We are all human, with the same basic bodies and needs. It’s only when we get out of the way of our own plans and expectations that God can surprise us. Our lives are journeys and it isn’t about getting to the end – except that it is, because we have the promise of eternal life. And until our dying breath, we are still on the journey.

My pilgrimage haunts me still. I’d go tomorrow (except that I haven’t trained!). I know that my next pilgrimage, even if it were the same route, would be entirely different. Different encounters, different bunk beds, different surprises and challenges (like there being “no room in the inn,” which happened a couple of times, including on the first day after having traversed the Pyrenees). And I might, again, get to the end and feel nothing. And then feel everything.

Godspeed on The Way.

The post Some things to think about before you go on a pilgrimage appeared first on The Toronto Anglican.

Attending the Christmas Lessons and Carols service at a nearby parish on the last Sunday of Advent is a tradition my daughters and I have had for many years. This year, as always, I made sure I set out with my offering ready to be put on the plate.

But as we walked to the church, I realized that, for many of those years, my offering had been the same: twenty dollars. There is inflation every year and my income had increased, but I was still “stuck” on twenty dollars. One crisp bill. Simple. Straightforward. Convenient.

On our way, we passed a bank machine. I decided to stop and withdraw some cash. And when it came time for passing the plate, I offered more than my usual amount. My annual Lessons and Carols offering had become “unstuck.”

“Sticky numbers” is the topic of this guest column on stewardship – the suggestion being that sometimes in our charitable donations we get “stuck” at a certain amount, even when our circumstances have changed.

Cash donations are prone to getting stuck. Whether it’s a ten, a twenty, a fifty or even a hundred- dollar bill, it is easy to get into the habit or not to go to the trouble of adding a second bill, or some loonies and toonies. For years, I gave twenty dollars at Lessons and Carols. Period. But the Bank of Inflation calculator (a very useful website!) tells me that, with inflation, that twenty dollars should be more like twenty-five dollars now.

And the same holds true for pre-authorized givings. Most parishes encourage their donors to use pre-authorized giving because it is more convenient and efficient, and also because it assures a steady stream of income, even when folks are not in the pews. This is all well and good. But it is easy for the amount of our monthly donation to get stuck and not take into account inflation or any change in our circumstances.

Even a “status quo” parish budget is going to increase year over year. The Diocese of Toronto encourages parishes, as good employers, to increase compensation for clergy and lay employees each year by at least the cost of living. Utility bills, maintenance costs, repairs – all these costs creep up, and if our offerings to support our parish’s ministries get “stuck,” it becomes harder for parishes to make ends meet. And if a parish is looking to step up its ministry, “stuck” givings make it even more of a challenge.

How can we “unstick” our givings?

Awareness is the first step – asking ourselves if we have reconsidered our charitable-giving level recently and adjusted it according to changes in our income. (And, yes, there are times when income may decrease, and we need to consider reducing our givings.)

For parishes that use pre-authorized giving (which is, hopefully, every parish!), making it easy and efficient for donors to change their givings is key. Why not send out an email with a link to a form every December or in early January? The more complicated the process of changing the monthly amount, the less likely it is that a donor will respond. Similarly, a thank-you letter to donors who use envelopes and an invitation for them to consider their pledge for the upcoming year is a way to discourage sticky numbers.

And cash. We increasingly live in a cashless society. Visitors, prospective newcomers and occasional parishioners are less and less likely to carry cash with them when they come to church. Some parishes are now offering alternatives – the capacity for on-site credit card donations, a link to Canada Helps, even a custom-designed app for giving. All these strategies make it easier for donors to choose the appropriate amount of a gift.

I’m glad there was a bank machine between my house and those lessons and carols. It felt good to get “unstuck.”

The Rev. Canon David Harrison was invited to write this column by The Steward’s regular columnist, Peter Misiaszek, the diocese’s director of Stewardship Development.

The post Has your regular giving become stuck? appeared first on The Toronto Anglican.

Prof. McLuhan, who died in 1980, wrote long before the advent of social media and the internet, but I suspect he would have a lot to say about these technologies and how the medium of social media in its myriad forms (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, to name a few) has become the message itself. Or to put it another way, what the “message” is that we send when we use social media to communicate to our friends and strangers alike.

In churchland, it has become standard practice for dioceses, bishops, parishes and clergy to use social media to communicate what they are up to. The audience is both internal and external, with the emphasis usually placed on the external. “That’s where the young people are,” we tell ourselves about Facebook and Instagram. “We need to be relevant” we say, so we post pictures of ourselves and our parishes and our diocese to show how busy and engaged we are, both to those who are in our pews and those who aren’t. We start to count “likes” and comments and followers, and believe we are being missional in spreading the good news of Jesus Christ (or, at least, the good news about ourselves and our ministry).

I’ve done it – in spades. Personally, I’ve known what it is like to constantly be on the look-out for the clever observation or the witty remark that I could post on Facebook, and then taken not-so-secret delight as the likes and comments have piled up. Once I even posted a photo of myself skating on a public rink in clerical collar, cassock and biretta, on the dare of a friend who said that I wouldn’t. And I’ve also rushed home after church to post dozens of pictures of something that has happened in my parish that morning. It was fun, exhilarating and satisfying.

But I’ve stopped. In fact, I’ve left Facebook altogether. (Truth be told, I never did tweet, and my Instragram account is followed by exactly five people: my mother, my wife, my two daughters and a first cousin.) I quit because something was niggling at me, and that something was what the message of the medium was and what it was becoming – at least for me. It was becoming “look at me” and “look at what I’m doing” and “look at what I’m willing to do.” The scientists who talk about the dopamine hit that comes with each “like” are right: it is satisfying. It’s great for the ego. It’s a rush.

I also stopped because of what I was seeing of the Church. It wasn’t generally my secular friends and acquaintances I saw falling into the “look at me” trap: it was my Church friends and acquaintances and strangers who were doing it alongside me. Sometimes it felt competitive. “I’ll match your cute children’s pageant with my even cuter children’s pageant.” “I’ll match your full pews with my stuffed, full pews.” I could feel the devil lurking behind my computer screen, wiggling his (or it is her?) little finger at me. C’mon, David, strut your stuff!

Is it a gospel message? Is it the message of the one who came not to be served but to serve? Is it the message of the one who humbled himself even to death on the cross? What is the message we send to the world, and to ourselves, when we get hooked on social media to promote ourselves, our parishes and our diocese? To be sure, social media allows us, individually and collectively, to communicate in a quick and relatively effortless way to hundreds, if not thousands, of people. And I don’t doubt for a moment that our Facebook and Instagram and Twitter accounts do some good. My parish continues to use all three (although, interestingly, I have never had someone tell me they have come to check out our parish because of social media. Our website – that’s a different story.)

But still, what is the deep, embedded message of using social media to communicate about ourselves and our ministry? Is it one of humility and service? Or is it one of competitiveness and self-absorption? And is this technology still so young that we haven’t yet had the time and space to take stock of its effects on our well-being?

We know what we think our message is. But maybe – just maybe – the medium is getting in the way.

The post What are we really communicating on social media? appeared first on The Toronto Anglican.

The real story is that this pilgrimage was a sacramental experience. It had its “outward and visible signs,” to be sure: sore feet, the drudgery of walking 20 or 25 km a day, closely shared quarters, precious little privacy, and the constant weight of my 9kg pack containing my entire belongings for six and a half weeks away from home. But there were also (thank God) those “inward and spiritual graces” that gave my pilgrimage depth, breadth and life.

Fortunate to have the opportunity to take a sabbatical from my parish after seven years, and still working through what had been a challenging year, I walked. My spiritual director helped me understand the walk as sacramental in itself – an outward and visible walking from a familiar place to a new place and, what’s more, an inward and spiritual journey of rest and renewal (and, yes, endurance).

For me, sacraments are all about encountering. I encounter the living Christ in the ordinary things of life: bread, wine, water, oil and, yes, people – those ordinary things that become, through the grace of God, extraordinary. Out of this world, and yet still very much in it.

The medieval pilgrimage from near the French-Spanish border in the Pyrenees to Santiago, where the remains of St. James are said to rest, has experienced a meteoric resurgence of interest in the past few decades. More than a quarter of a million pilgrims arrive each year in Santiago following one of several medieval routes. The journey needn’t be solitary – unless you choose to walk alone, which I did (at least for most of the time): hours and hours to be alone with one’s thoughts. Balm for an introvert!

My grandparents consumed my thoughts one morning as I walked toward a place called Viana on the seventh day of my walk, pondering what I remembered about each of them. There was a span of 30 years between the shock of my maternal grandfather’s sudden death when I was 10 and the expected death of my paternal grandmother when I was almost 40. About to turn 51 and myself a parent of two adults, the sure and steady passing of time and generations swirled around in my head and, what’s more, my heart. Pondering all this, I looked ahead and saw an elderly woman walking toward me, slowly but confidently relying on her cane. As I approached her, I was overwhelmed with a deep sense of love for her, an unexpected welling up of emotion that compelled me to tip my worn and cherished trekking hat to her. To my surprise she stopped, came to me, took my hands in hers, looked straight up into my eyes and spoke directly to me. Having failed in my ambition to learn some Spanish before I left, I understood not a word except “God bless you.”

“God bless you” she said, and then continued her walk out of town.

I stood still for a while and watched as she walked away from me. Even in that instant I knew that this would be one of those profound and unexpected encounters that would animate my Camino pilgrimage. It was neither planned nor expected but was both outward and visible, inward and spiritual.

The word “sacrament” comes from the word “sacred” or “holy,” and this brief encounter was certainly that. But sacrament also means “mystery.” Not mystery in the sense of something to be solved, but rather something so numinous and profound that it cannot be fully contained with words nor dissected by analysis. By God’s grace, the water poured over our heads incorporates us into Jesus’ death and resurrection. The bread and wine placed upon the altar become his very life given for us. In my spiritual middle age, I care not a whit to understand the how and the why of these mysteries. I’m perfectly happy to rest easy “seeing through a mirror, dimly,” as St. Paul puts it.

It remains a mystery to me why this one woman, out of hundreds and hundreds I passed, stopped. Or why I was taken with a deep and spontaneous love for her. Or why I tipped my hat. But it is not a mystery I care to try to understand. I only care to continue to cherish this fleeting encounter on my Camino pilgrimage – knowing that somehow God’s love was made visible for me in the grasp of her hands and in whatever words she spoke. And being thankful that God does work in mysterious ways.

The post A holy moment on the way appeared first on The Toronto Anglican.

I wasn’t going to my own church or to another Anglican church, where I pretty much know what to expect and what to wear. I was going up the street to C3 Church, which holds its services at the local high school.

Because I live next door in the rectory, I had only heard from my parishioners on their way to church about the prominent signs (“C3 TORONTO Sundays 9:30 & 11:30) that pop up outside Central Tech every week. C3 (which stands for Christian City Church) is part of a global Pentecostal movement that began in Australia in 1980 and has been creating a buzz in Toronto since opening here in 2012. “Why are millennials flocking to Toronto’s C3 Church?” the Toronto Star asks. “I’ve never seen so many young people in a church before,” someone wrote in Toronto Life. And so, being on sabbatical and finding myself home on a Sunday morning, I decided it was time to check it out, butterflies and all. What was I getting myself in for? Was I wearing the right thing? Was I even cool enough to show up?

After confidently telling my wife I didn’t think there would be an offering so I wasn’t bringing any cash, I headed up the street. With all the signs, there was no way I had to do the Anglican thing of guessing which door would be unlocked. While still on the sidewalk, a host met me. Admitting to her that it was my first time, she pointed the way up the steps and let me know that an usher would help me find a seat. On the way into the auditorium, I grabbed a coffee (being assured that, despite the “no food or drinks” sign, it was okay) and noticed two “INFO & GIVING” booths. Maybe I should have stuffed that $10 bill in my pocket.

The count-down clock on the screen didn’t leave any doubt about when the service would begin and, sure enough, right on the dot of 11:30, the lights went down, people stood, and the band began their set. Just like my own church, there was a kind of “liturgy” about it. Most people seemed to know what to do and expect, and there was “smoke and lights” (although, at C3, this means a fog machine and strobes). At first, I stayed sitting in my aisle seat until, having to keep standing up to let latecomers past me, I gave in and stood up. And yes, by the fourth song of the opening set of catchy tunes, I did join in. “When in Rome,” as they say.

By this time, the auditorium was jammed and we were invited to hug the person next to us. Before I could figure out what to do, the woman to my left gave me a huge smile and a warm hug. And then it was time to talk about money. No Anglican reticence here. Each row got its own large, deep bucket to pass (no shallow plates to be seen) and we were reminded that we could use the credit card machines at the back or pull out our phones and give on-the-spot through PayPal. The assistant pastor laid it on the line: if we withheld any of ourselves from the Lord, we would limp.

And then the main event: the sermon, where Pastor Sam Picken assured us that, like Noah, if we build our ark in faith and in obedience to God, we will never sink. Mixing self-deprecating humour and fiery rhetoric with lots of talk about relationships (with God, with one another, with the city and the world), he assured us that God has put everything into our life to succeed – at a great marriage, at getting that promotion, and fixing whatever messes we are in. “God rewards those who earnestly seek him” was the message, and he pointed out that this was good news for C3 as it prepares for a church plant this fall in Toronto’s east end. The congregation was with him with their applause and um-hum’s, although things got a bit more tepid among the almost exclusively millennial crowd when he urged them to forego sex before marriage

And then, after almost an hour and 40 minutes (long even by Anglican standards), it was over. But if we wanted to know more, we were invited to follow the big “What’s Next” sign over the door next to the stage, where a home-cooked lunch and conversation with the C3 team was on offer.

Why are millennials flocking to C3? I don’t pretend to have the full answer. But I do know that they are being invited, that they know exactly where to go, and that they are being welcomed into a relationship with God and a clear vision of what that relationship entails, including hard personal and financial sacrifices. The music wasn’t “my” music but it was really good. The welcome was well-organized and genuine and the coffee was great. I didn’t mind so much being hugged by a stranger, and if I had decided to find out “what’s next,” I knew which door to go through.

And yes, those butterflies. As soon as the host on the sidewalk said “welcome” and showed me the way, they were gone. Next time I’d wear the same thing. And bring my wallet.

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