What is it?

If you've never been to an Anglican synod then......you'll either love it or hate it. Having just spent last evening and all today (and looking to tomorrow afternoon) at a synod you may (or may not) have sympathy with me.

We have looked at the finances of our Diocese. The Bishop has told us what he thinks is important in our State...and he seemed to get it right (euthanasia, water, refugees and so on) and we have had lunch and morning tea...which is probably just as important as it's a great chance to catch up with people you haven't seen for a year.

Lest you think it is all beer and skittles, we also had to listen to (what seemed to me) drivel about Mission Action Plans (I'll qualify this later) in which we were told about lukewarm successes and the seduction to present novelty and yet more novelty in the name of being relevant. We were invited to reinvent the Dean and Chapter (Cathedral staff and support) and were bombarded by the excellent work that our social agency Anglicare is caught up in.

It is easy to become swamped. Conversations round the table and in the car on the way home were helpful for getting a sense of perspective.

My point? Let us not in the name of innovation forget that there is much that just continues on steadfastly.

Whilst applauding innovation it is easy to allow such plaudits to critique the traditional values that we have stood for.

Like struggling with trying to make genuine community might mean keep on keeping on instead of the ever escalating seduction of novel ways of being relevant.

I would maintain for example that the parish of which I have been the priest for 15 years has struggled with just staying where we are, instead of moving to one church and then another when we got bored. As a result the community depth is profound (and this is a characteristic of many of our 'ordinary' parishes) but they look 'ordinary'. They are not sexy...and there is almost certainly no Mission Action Plan!

O Synod. Can't wait for it to be over.

When the world is in meltdown

This weekend is taken up with our annual Diocesan Meeting or Synod. The Eucharist last night seemed only moderately well-attended both by clergy and laity. We seem to have forgotten about the opportunity to invite community and other church leaders, the liturgy was very clergy dominated and even (as far as I could tell) those laity who were allowed to administer Communion were trainee priests.
The Bishop's address was dry, and he looked tired...poor man
The agenda is dominated by formality with only (it would seem) a slight departure into the controversial to discuss GAFCON (so called Global Anglican Futures Conference...a body that declares itself to be the new fount of orthodoxy).
The Bishop did press us about water issues, and the global financial crisis, but where were the community leaders to hear it?
It will all be over tomorrow evening. PTL!

What education might be for?

My contribution to the wit of the 20th century was "Anglicans like to be told what to do so that they can go ahead and not do it"
I try to not tell people what to do (some would laugh) and this worries some people. We work the education system in such a way that we get good at discerning what bring the teacher's or authority figure's approval, so when we are deliberately not told it can be alarming.
Janet Albrechtsen, the rightist commentator, writing in The Australian this week reminds us that education should be about teaching kids to sift what they are taught so that they can detect the teacher's bias. This is not dissimilar to my own goal, (rather unusual for me to agree with Ms Albrechtsen). I don't want people to believe what I believe, I want them to respoect what I believe but to make up their own minds.
The ongoing grammar debate might have something of this. The trouble is that people want to be told what to do....how easy it is to just assume that there is a set of rules. This is the great flaw, grammar is much more fluid than that.
The rules by and large are not absolute, the only given is that you need to be understood. So accurate spelling is probably more important than meticulous sentence structure.
But if I write that chocolate pudding is deeeelishus, you probably know what I mean.
We make absolute rules...no prepositions at the end of sentences....which don't make the slightest biut of difference (and it is now widely regarded that this rule is more breached than kept).
What about split infinitives? Most people don't have a clue about this ...and although each year ay Synod we used to count up their number, I would like to also contend that this rule is more subtle than it is often given credit for....(did you even notice that I split the infinitive in that last sentence?) viz: to also contend has a slightly different meaning from 'I would like also to contend' or 'to contend also'...'to anxiously deny' (don't you think dear reader) is different from 'to deny anxiously' or 'anxiously to deny'.
The point? People shoudl be being taught to think not to regurgitate!!

the end is.....

well the Synod....(see below) ended yesterday. So here we are with an afternoon up our sleeves.(plenty of boxes still to unpack)

It was, I suppose, quite good. Though I have never known a Synod to end a day before it was scheduled to.

Some observe and again, I suppose, it is true that it is a much more controlled exercise than it has ever been. That we discuss what we are allowed to discuss, and there is probably a lot less free rolling challenge.

We live, as they say, in interesting times.

Busy, busy

This weekend the annual Synod (busy meeting) of the Diocese of Adelaide. So blogging will be intermittent.
Last night (Friday)the Archbishop wide-ranged from Sudan to evangelism, from aborigines to the environment. Today there will be money and women bishops, Anglicare and administration.
I suppose it has to be done.
It is always good to get together and have lots of people who you know, and have some common interest with in one place at one time.
Think about us as we sit and listen and try (in my case) to keep our mouths shut.

Early morning mueslings

As we begin the final stage of our Grand Tour, this time next week we will be preparing for the flight from KL to Adelaide, there are certain random musings about world culture that float in and out at irregular intervals. Some of them are:

• Family is a very close bond. Yesterday my aunt showed me pictures of my grandmother at her wedding and you would have sworn it was my sister. These physical characteristics are perhaps more noticeable when the gaps of observation are decades rather than days or weeks.
• Family Personality transcends all sorts of things. My aunty with whom we have been staying (and who will be reading this!!..hello Adelaide) who is my father's half sister is also remarkably like me in many ways. Both bossy and right! Of course we are also wildly different. My cousins with whom we grew up and from whom we have been separated for many years, are able just to sit down and pick up the conversation and get up to speed in half an hour. A great thing. Of course we walk out of each other's lives for another few years today,
• Supermarkets are a great leveller. They all look like Blackwood or Unley. Though they have their distinctive stuff. Fabulously cheap Pasta and cheese in Rome, beautiful patisserie on the shelves in Paris, and good Pork Pies in England!! Yet there is plastic wrap, garbage bags, shampoo and cup-a-soup, that all look the same!! Great levellers and yet there is regional stamping.
• Cars. The world is transport mad and greedy, it is interesting to note what Adelaide could avoid if it acts now. But most places leave it till it's too late. Maybe this is simplistic...but the world can't go on doing what it has been doing.
• Politics. There is an opportunistic sameness about the process, having been in France for the last Presidential election, and England for Blair's resignation one might asell have been in Australia.
• Synod. I missed my first synod ever because I was away. I seem to have survived!

Abuse

I was rightly told off by an erstwhile reader for only posting twice last week.
It was one of those weeks .
Part of the hurly burly was caused by the Diocesan Synod which took up Thursday night, Friday from 2-10 p..m., Saturday from 8 a.m. -8.30 p.m., and Sunday afternoon.
It was not all hard slog and there were lighter moments. There were also profound insights and deeply moving times.
During one discussion a priest began his address by saying "I am a survivor of sexual abuse in this Diocese..." and he went on to invite us to be sure that we did not perpetuate abuse by victimising (particularly) gay and lesbian people.
I had indulged in my own theatrics my declaring myself to be a "bastard in the eyes of the church".
There was some laughter at suggested that I was still so.
I made this disclosure to show how sexual morés change.
My mother was divorced, the victim of a violent marriage. My father was her second husband. In the late 1940s when they were married the Anglican Church would not marry divorcées, and regarded those who married as living in adultery.
My mother, though a devout and practising Anglican, was married in the Presbyterian Church and readmitted to Communion (as she had been technically excommunicated) in the Church of England a week after she was married.
When I was born the church still regarded divorced people as living in adultery. So I technically am a bastard......resist the temptation, resist it, resist it!
My particular personal appreciation for the priest's disclosure that he was a survivor is that given my own bizarre "bastard" disclosure, about the way the church used to treat divorced people as though they were living in adultery even if they were legally married as my parents were, gave me a deeper appreciation of how abusive this was for them, and how this abuse was perpetuated for decades.
My mother worked through it but it probably took her 30 or 40 years. My father (who was not really a church person) in one sense couldn't have cared less about the stupid church games but it certainly made him feel unwelcome and less inclined to embrace the life of the church. Both of them were abused by this and I had never clearly named it like that. So I am grateful for that insight.
There was much other stuff to be thankful for.
The enjoyment of the company of other Anglicans who you only see at Synod once a year, which used to be so much a feature of Synod and shared meals and conviviality.
Is everything returning to normal? I hope so.
But it will never be the same again.