The bishop of Reading, England, has called on Anglicans to send less Christmas cards this year. My friend, Father Frank Julian Gelli in London, who was the late Lady Diana’s pastor and spiritual adviser, sent me the bishop’s message.
That note from the bishop of Reading also came over to the Episcopal Church USA and its many parishes affiliated with the worldwide Protestant church headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, but I did not yet get the message from Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Middleburg, Virginia, which is in disarray with an interim rector, the Reverend C. Anne Hallmark who has defied church precedence and announced her intention to stay as permanent rector.
The Emmanuel Church vestry has gone along and apparently suspended its search for a permanent rector. So I don’t know where we’re going.
I know nothing about Anne Hallmark, except a brief meeting where she did not respond positively to my openness about my favorite books of the Bible and my offer to volunteer my services for the poor and outreach that my mother performed for many years. Hallmark did not invite me to attend church services, offer me any spiritual advice or counseling as a member of the church since age 12, and later as a choir member and acolyte until I went away to college and the military.
Hallmark basically blew me off. She’s apparently got her own agenda, so I get the message: You’re not wanted. The ecumenical, spiritual, and brotherly-love torch at Emmanuel Church in Middleburg, Virginia, that I have known with four permanent rectors since 1956 has apparently been extinguished by our first woman rector.
It’s a sad result of mine and my mother’s devotion to the church over more than a half century. But times have changed and I know when I’m not welcome, blown off, told in so many words to go elsewhere to church. So I shall.
It’s hard, because I was a choirboy and acolyte at Emmanuel Church before Anne Hallmark was born, and joined with former rector Earnest A. “Froggie” DeBordenave -- against my father’s wishes but with my mother’s approval -- in sit-ins in Middleburg in 1961 that got rid of segregation of our local restaurants and the state of Virginia’s “massive resistance” against allowing blacks to enjoy the same public facilities as whites in that era.
My mother, Rusty Archibald led the altar guild at Emmanuel Church in Middleburg for 30-plus years, drove people all over the place for medical appointments as part of the Fish network, and volunteered several days a week at the local food bank operated by the Middleburg United Methodist Church.
I don’t much like getting the bum’s boot from Emmanuel Church by Hallmark. I’ll show up there for church services when I want, as a 50-year attendee.
Otherwise, I’ve been invited to join the Middleburg Baptist Church, so I’ll go there. And I have Catholic friends who attend Saint Stephen’s Church in Middleburg, land bought by President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who scouted the spot on horseback and organized the deal to purchase the spot for the church with property owners Sam Fred and John Pettibone.
So I’m not worried about where I’ll be welcomed to go to church.
My Church of England priest friend, Father Frank Julian Gelli, who was pastor and spiritual adviser to Lady Diana, Princess of Wales, until her death, says the bishop’s “miracle recipe to tackle the crisis is that you send fewer Xmas cards to people you ‘do not really like’ Instead, you should just put up your feet and relax. Oh, yes, he also opines you should give fewer presents but hand out jars of marmalade or pickled onions instead.”
That will fit in with our current economic situation. I buy my Christmas presents throughout the year, so my daughters will get a variety of books and CD’s they will like, but at Christmas this year I especially wonder where we are going as a country and a culture.
Father Frank courageously called the bishop of Reading’s notice about Christmas cards “dull … boring … utterly feeble … feckless … asinine … grumpy.”
I believe that says it very well.
Father Frank further tore apart the direction of the Anglican Church in England –- and by rote the Episcopal Church USA –- as follows:
“Expecting meaningful leadership from [Church of England] bishops is like trusting Gordon Brown to fix the current economic and financial crisis. I mean, the PM is the man largely responsible for the mess we are in. Did he not run the British economy for ten years? It would be like appointing a burglar chief of police.
“Similarly, Anglican panjandrums must take responsibility for the spiritual waste they have helped to create in this country. Many people in the audience spoke as if Jesus Christ meant to them as little as Zarathustra or Bodhidharma. And yet you have a national church, ‘by law established,’ whose supreme governor and ‘defender of the faith’ is the monarch, with 26 bishops or ‘lords spiritual’ sitting by right in the House of Lords.
“There are thousands of parishes and vicars up and down the country. Nonetheless ignorance about the faith –- the ancestral religion of the English people –- is frightening. No one knows what Christianity teaches, because churchmen no longer have the courage to tell.
“How can you blame someone for going astray, when he has never been told about the straight and narrow?
“I recall what a Muslim friend, a city gent, told me: ‘My colleagues seem to know of only one way of enjoying themselves,’ and he listed some disagreeable things. ‘When I asked them why they did that’, he added, ‘I realised no one had ever told them of an alternative, better way of being.’
“Precisely. The church should have, loud and clear. Tragically, she has not. Hence, her bosses stand condemned in the Lord’s eyes.
“Third, the priest reminded the viewers what Christmas means: God with us, Christ with us. That calls for celebration, if anything does. Joy and merry-making are part of the holy season, along with some austerity in Advent. December 25th was chosen of old as the birthday of Jesus to overcome certain crass pagan festivals, like the Roman saturnalia.
“The Puritans forbade the observance of Christmas, partly out of a long-faced religiosity but also because they held that for a true believer every day should be a holy day.
“Still, if any feast calls for rejoicing, Christmas is one.
“A rejoicing, mind, in thanksgiving for the Holy Babe of Bethlehem, the Prince of Peace, the Saviour of the World. Yep, Thanksgiving lies at the heart of it all.
“Once in the Underground, a
man was lugging a huge case up the stairs. He had great difficulty and
struggled much with that. The friend I was with, a robust young man, stepped in
and, straining himself, helped the man to lift up the burden all the way up the
stairs. Once at the top, the man turned his back on my friend and walked away
without saying a single word of thanks.
“My poor friend said nothing, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth. It was ugly. What manner of boor would not have the grace of saying ‘thanks’ to one who helped?
“Well, it is the same with God. Human beings should at the very least say ‘thank you’ to God. So the Church should teach and preach not to make people miserable by abstinence -- the credit crunch will see to that –- but to lead people to put that crucial thanksgiving back into Christmas -- a thanksgiving that, by the way, is also what ‘Eucharist,’ Holy Communion, means, something Christ himself enjoined his followers to do ‘in memory of me.’
“Fourth, all right, the C-of-E bosses may be stupid and faithless but it is not all their fault. Maybe not all Professor Dawkins’ doing either, but it is down to secularism, the way we live now, I suppose.
“If only we could go back to the catacombs. When the church was persecuted, it flourished. The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the victories to come. But of course ‘the world’ today is too astute to engage in direct persecution. Instead, Christ is ignored. His name is hardly ever mentioned in public life. The media only do so with a sneer.
“Young people are corrupted, while God is imprisoned in our grey, joyless little conventicles, called churches. (Sorry, here I go again, having a go at the church. Can’t help it.)
“Bob Dylan –- do you remember his ‘born again’ phase? He then produced a stirring song called ‘Saved.’ It led some hippies to check out the parish church. When they came out they said they could not understand ‘what Bob Dylan sees in it.’ Quite.
“Fifth, forgive my vanity but it ended a bit inconsequentially, in a big applause. The presenter asked about the scarf I was wearing. ‘It is Palestinian,’ I answered. ‘I wear it in solidarity with them. Because Palestine deserves justice.’ So many in the audience cheered. That was good and it pleased me. I felt the paradox, though.
“The Baby Jesus for me has dual nationality. He is a Jew but also a Palestinian. Huh! A good omen, I think, because if anyone can solve the Israel/Palestine conundrum, He can.”
Amen, Father Frank. God bless you. I wish there were more Christian, Jewish, and Muslim religious leaders with your erudition, spirituality, and ecumenism.
Where are we going? Who knows. It's in God's hands.
All the best for the rest of Advent and Christmas as 2008 ends, and prayers, please, for better times in 2009 and beyond.