When she was in
Grade 1, one of our granddaughters who attends French immersion at a Catholic
school, asked me why weren’t Catholic.
“Because we’re Anglican,” I said.
Unsatisfactory as that answer may be, it satisfied her, and strangely it
has always satisfied me.
I am a cradle Anglican. I was baptized at St. Chad’s in Toronto – (not an auspicious beginning for someone who is a vocal and active supporter of same sex marriage).
I attended an Anglican girls’ school. Except for a brief lapse in university (occasioned more by Saturday night frat parties than any dark night of the soul) I have always attended church. I’ve taught Church school now for 38 years. All my children and all my grandchildren have at one point been in my class.
Except for the baptism of my children, I can’t remember ever seeing my parents in a church, but from the time I was little my grandmother took me every week to St. Mark’s in Toronto. It was a High Anglican church and I loved the pageantry and the militancy and the language of the old prayer book. In the summer when we were at Cameron Lake, north of Toronto, I went to Salvation Army Sunday school because the kids on our shore could walk there from our cottages. I loved the Salvation Army services too. I loved the fervour and the blood and salvation and the portable organ and the fact that sometimes people would leap up and be saved before my very eyes. I loved my school. I loved chapel every day because it broke up the tedium of Latin and algebra. I loved our tunics and our red blazers and our motto “Crux Mihi Anchora. Vincit Omnia Veritas. The forces that shaped my spiritual life were a strange and heady brew, but apparently they were enough for me, and I’m very grateful for that.
Last night, as our family does every Shrove Tuesday, we got together for
pancakes and bacon. This morning,
as I do every Ash Wednesday, I read T.S. Eliot’s extraordinary poem “Ash
Wednesday”. Later this afternoon,
Ted and I will go to 5:30 services at the Cathedral. One of our granddaughters is serving. She and her sister will be serving
together or separately right through Easter. As I said to Madeleine last night, during Lent being an
Anglican is pretty much a full-time job.
She rolled her eyes but she didn’t complain. She is, after all, an Anglican.