What is in Kelvin's Head?

Sabbatical: Back to Glasgow

02/12/2012
I’ve arrived back in Glasgow. For those who haven’t realised what I’ve been up to, I’ve been on a big sabbatical trip that has kept me out of the country for 12 weeks.

I was a little cautious about indicating online that my flat was empty for an extended period of time. Facebook friends will know something about where I’ve been but twitter and blog friends won’t know as much.

It is very strange being back. I’m pleased to be home but have a bit of a dose of jet lag which is making me feel decidedly under par. I conquered it on the way out by going swimming in the Pacific soon after I arrived in Vancouver. I suspect that I’d better not try that down at Pacific Quay.

I’ve been living with my watch jumping around all over the place for weeks. Since I set off in September, I’ve shifted time zones forward and backwards by 22 hours altogether. I know some people do this in their work all the time, but it has been a new experience for me and one that has been, at times, rather disconcerting.

Anyway, for those interested, here is the list of places visited. I was trying to visit cathedrals and other interesting churches, looking for those which were growing and trying to search out those with a progressive/inclusive agenda. I find I learn from people who are different from me. You learn most I suspect from people who are different from you but like you in some ways. Some of these were substantial visits of a couple of weeks, other were side trips where I met with people for conversations along the way or simply experienced what was going on around me.
- Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver – good preaching, music and a very familiar inclusive ethos and a diocese rebuilding in places where there has been strife and secession
- St Paul’s, Seattle – beautiful liturgy with string quartet and jazz pianist and a brilliant formation programme for adults
- Compline at St Mark’s Cathedral, Seattle – 500 people at Compline, mostly young people, many lying on the floor
- St David of Wales, Portland – amazing congregational development
- Trinity Cathedral, Portland – iconography institute and huge programme to feed the hungry
- Grace Cathedral, San Francisco – beauty, labyrinths a huge programme of everything and a great team
- St Gregory of Nyssa, San Francisco – where we dance as well as sing the liturgy in another fabulous building
- University of the South: Sewanee – great school of theology
- St Paul’s, Chattanooga – y’all’s welcome at this busy urban parish
- Washington National Cathedral – still suffering earthquake damage, still a spiritual home for the American nation
- All Saints’, Chicago – thriving urban parish, feeding the hungry and worshipping with joy
- St James’s Cathedral, Chicago – very Victorian looking Cathedral, very forward looking Dean
- The Advent, Boston – the heating was broken but the fire had not gone out
- St Michael and All Angels, Sanibel, Florida – a few days retreat in the sun over Thanksgiving
- Cathedral of St John the Divine, New York – A vast, incredible building, where they focus more on people than the vast, incredible building
- St Mark’s in the Bowery, New York – fabulous preaching and creative music with a gospel/blues undercurrent
- St Lydia’s Dinner Church, Brooklyn – a church which emerges out of a meal and singing
Fairly obviously, it has been a busy trip. An incredible one too. It is a period of time that I’ll never forget. Of course, whilst I’ve been exploring these places, I’ve been meeting the most amazing people – “12 weeks hanging out with cool people” was how one of them described it. I’ve also been enjoying learning so much not only about matters ecclesiastical as about Canada and the USA themselves.

Inevitably, coming back to the UK is a bit of a shock to the system. As I try to get my mind around what time it is, I am also starting to put it all together and pick out the themes and moods that I’ve been travelling around. On the plane on the way back home I looked through, sequentially, all the photographs I’ve taken. There are two and a half thousand of them.

I’ve done the most interesting and refreshing project I could think to accomplish with my sabbatical time away and am immensely grateful to all those who made it possible.

Just a few days more and I will be back at work in St Mary’s. Then the outworking of it all as I bring what I’ve learned into my daily life.
Canada, sabbatical, USA

23 responses to “What if this is the end of the Eucharist?”

Thomas Scott

06/05/2020

Just noticing here that DGD (of happy memory) seems to have left out of his catalogue of joyous, sad, perilous, and solemn occasions any instance of celebrating during a plague or pestilence. I’m not worried about the mass. The eucharist need not be celebrated as though it were a car battery, as if not offering it now would somehow allow the power to run down. It is not at risk, we are, which I think is your point. The questions asked are worth asking, of course.

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Mo Nicholson

06/05/2020

Mo Nicholson. This is an intriguing discussion and what I would like to add to it is the observation that I have had to learn the hard way that participation in the Eucharist being made impossible in no way diminishes an individual’s ability to worship God or be in fellowship with other believers. I am barred from receiving Holy Communion in the Catholic church because allergies make this impossible for me. The pain induced by this has little to do with feeling separation from God, in fact nothing at all as I do not feel that. It comes from feeling excluded from the community, different sections if which regard it as desirable or tolerable that a member of the community should be excluded in this way. This experience has made me understand as never before that if we place prime value on liturgical celebrations, ir indeed anything else, above charity, compassion, welcome and inclusivity, in other words love, then we have become the sounding gong which St Paul warned against. If we truly believe that God is love, as I do, then it is obvious that it is love for one another which makes us true children of God our Father, and in light of this we could begin to look at these present challenging circumstances as simply an opportunity to love more, to reach out to one another in whatever way possible in the knowledge that this is what actually matters and always did. Only perhaps we were tempted to almost make a fetish of our rituals, sacraments and so on. And perhaps this can show us a better way more adapted to the world we are supposed to serve.

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Lynsay Downs

06/05/2020

You and your conversation with Dave Roberts prompted me to write this. Does it resonate for you?

https://astonishing.community/2020/05/06/conversations-in-coronatide/

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1. Kelvin
  
  06/05/2020
  
  Thanks Lynsay – yes, it does resonate with me very much.
  
  I’ve shared it on facebook. I think it is really helpful.
  
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Fr Keith

06/05/2020

Thanks again for such a thoughtful piece. With the Eucharist central to much of, at least Anglican/Episcopalian, worship in recent generations, we perhaps forget that the Church in these islands was, between the Reformation and the liturgical revivals of the 19th and 20th centuries, sustained by Mattins and Evensong as the regular diet of worship on Sundays. I’m not advocating a return to such times, but there is, as you suggest, work to be done on non-Eucharistic worship (though not defining it as a negative). Thanks again.

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Fenland Boy

07/05/2020

For the record, I’m not in favour of lay presidency at the Eucharist. I believe, for better or worse, in an ordered church.

Why are you concerned about lay Presidency?

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Chuck

08/05/2020

May I say respectfully, lighten up. Many Anglicans/Episcopalians lived on the edges of civilization in the nascent U.S. and various elements of the British Empire. Priests to celebrate the Holy Eucharist and to baptize were seldom seen, at most twice a year in many areas. (Bishops, only every several years.) The Church carried on in this manner decade after decade. If circumstances require, the Church will carry on again despite our profound sense of loss.

I should add, to those who grew up under threat or reality of war, persecution, oppression, famine, other disease, etc, the present difficulty is not unfamiliar in many respects.

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Miriam MacCarthy

08/05/2020

Thank you! It is wonderful to read these serious, personal thoughts about the Eucharist. My feeling is that it has become celebrated to the point of boredom. Church, and what we do in it, is in danger of becoming simply a habit. It could just as well be crackerjack for a fast-asleep congregation. My heresy is that the direction Jesus gave is to “do this in remembrance of me”, and that means everything we eat at any time, whether alone or with others, in thanksgiving. If that is seriously done, it has vastly more meaning. It really gets ones attention and requires preparation. Would not become popular or usual, I predict!

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