David and alto and Solitary Cook:
I am an Episcopalian, the American equivalent of the Anglican Church of Canada. Everyone predicted our ordination of women would separate us from the Anglican Communion. It was only the start. Our acceptance and blessing of same sex union and our ordination of gays and lesbians has become the last straw and is leading to schism not because of the words of our founder nor the spirit of those words but because of the fear and prejudice of a majority of voters in the Communion.
Like our founder, the Palestinian outcast Jesus, we fully and wholly accept all people as loved and equals and God’s. So our Communion is voting us out. I am especially sorry to learn that the vote yesterday in Canada failed. I believe it failed due to fear. Maybe fear that our example will be visited on our Canadian sister. Or maybe there is fear of change, fear of what others might think. Still, that founder of ours taught us not to live in fear (Philippians 4:6-7, for one example).
I am drawn, as always, to the red words of our founder who spoke of resolving all things in love and forgiveness, and who, in asking men who had not sinned to cast the first stone asks us all to empathize. I empathize enough to know that if my church told me that I couldn’t marry and have my marriage blessed in it, I’d feel less than accepted and loved. And therefore I am very sad that religion shows yet again it has nothing to do with those red words and therefore, in this case and others, is not of Jesus but instead of power or fear or “what will they think”: of Empire. First it was Rome. Now, Western Culture. Organized religion once again proves antithetical to those red words.
The creation myth speaks to a truth: we are all made in the Image that created everything. Imagine the wonder! Sit in the Mystery, with the paradox. The awe of unconditional love. We can’t even imagine a love that encompasses us all.
No matter what the Anglican Communion does to the Episcopal Church or what the Canadian General Synod decides, the only thing that counts are the words of a Palestinian crucified for daring to place love above power, forgiveness above hate, people above Empire. When Jesus opposes human sinfulness, it is the sins of malice with which he has no patience: the greed, the cruelty, the tyranny of the powerful; the sins of weakness are always patiently healed. Jesus rightly accuses the “religious” of "straining out gnats while swallowing camels" (Matthew 23:24). I believe this vote is “of malice” and that, sadly, yesterday Canadian Anglicans swallowed a camel.
The truth is that those red words are paradoxical as is life, as is mystery. We hate to hold paradox. Our shadow self is any part of ourselves and our institutions that we hide or deny because it seems socially unacceptable. The church has focused on sexuality and body-issues as our "sinful" shadow, but that is too narrow a definition. The larger and deeper issue for individuals and Western Culture is actually failure itself. Thus, the genius of those red words is that they incorporate failure into a new definition of spiritual success: there’s that paradox! This is why Jesus says that prostitutes, drunkards, and tax collectors are getting into the kingdom of God before the chief priests and religious elders (Matthew 21:31).
Our success-driven culture scorns all “otherness”, failure, powerlessness, and any form of poverty and our church should embrace them as should we all. Jesus begins his Sermon on the Mount by praising "the poor in spirit" (Matthew 5:3). We miss the whole point. Nonviolence, weakness in any form, “otherness” and simplicity are the North American shadow self. We are proving that in our politics, especially in our U.S. Presidential race. We avoid the very things that Jesus praises, and we try to project a strong, secure, successful image to ourselves and the world. We reject all human vulnerability and seek dominance instead. Would be leaders make false promises. And not just in the U.S. Witness the Brexit promises made and abandoned after it won.
St. Francis lived the life of a self proclaimed fool and proclaimed through his lifestyle his delight in powerlessness, humility, poverty, simplicity, and failure. He lived so close to the bottom of things that there was no place to fall. Even when insulted, he did not take offense. Now that is truest freedom. St Francis fell upward. (Richard Rohr wrote a great book about Falling Upward.)
Our shadow is often subconscious. It takes effort and life-long practice to look for, find, and embrace what we dismiss, what we disdain. After spending so much energy avoiding the appearance of failure, it takes a major paradigm shift in consciousness to integrate our shadow, as individuals and as a church. It is the false self that is sad and humbled by shadow work, because it loses. The True Self, "hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3) is never humiliated. It only grows from such insight.
One of the great surprises on the human journey is that we come to full consciousness precisely by facing our shadow, our own contradictions, and making friends with our own mistakes and failings. People who have had no inner struggles, who have a need to be “right” are invariably superficial. Our church follows when it courts culture’s approval. We begin to endure it more than appreciate it, because it and it’s people have little to communicate and show little curiosity. The paradox in shadow work is that when we fall we fall up or, as St. Julian of Norwich wrote in her Divine Revelations of Love (paraphrased) "First we fall and then we recover from the fall. Both are the mercy of God!" The church needs to recognize it has fallen so it may recover and revel in God’s mercy rather than court worldly power. Holiness is well hidden. The proud won’t recognize it. The humble will fall into it every day and not even realize it.
Please do not judge our hearts by our shadow avoiding church. We can only pray it will catch up.
Holding paradox is hard. Not holding it is death.
I am so sorry for the many broken hearts north of our border. Please recognize the church is not Love, not God, but people struggling with shadow.
It loses relevance by seeking worldly acceptance rather than mercy and grace. Yesterday love and Love paid the cost.
May your hearts find healing and mercy in grace.
