Mar 12 | Kept in the Light: Lent Journal #6

Celebrated “Caroline Divine” Jeremy Taylor’s call to hallow life’s every moment seems incredibly timely. We live in a world where there is a remarkable desire for spiritual growth and fulfillment in churches, and for coherent spirituality and ritual outside the churches. Secular society does sometimes fill the void with a variety of rituals – Remembrance Day, sports traditions and chants, Thanksgiving, and even clubbing on the weekend have their own ritualized necessities. Most of these rituals, though, are very limited – performed only once a year or a few times in a particular season. Even those everyday rituals like weekend clubbing, which can be a huge part of someone’s life (my own experience at my favourite Goth club, a place I went to faithfully every Sunday for two years) can either lose its appeal or not engage deeply enough with a person’s psyche. And, of course, none of these rituals are required to deal with the infinite if they do not wish do, save perhaps Remembrance Day, which can all too easily descend into vacuous patriotism.

Taylor called those who followed his instruction to hallow their lives not simply through “in-church” worship but through continuous recognition of God’s working in one’s life, as well as the modification of behaviour to remain within a state of piety and propriety, all the better to pray. He was a praxis-theologian, a phrase very much in vogue in today’s church. In my own parish, a census undertaken by our leadership showed that the development of spiritual practice was a huge concern for the congregation, particularly for newer and younger members. I don’t think that’s an anomaly. Young people reaching out to a faith tradition for meaning want to know how to be the church every day, not just Sundays. Long gone are the days when church was attended simply for appearance’s sake. In Cascadia, simply going to church itself can be a counter-cultural statement! The person who gives up Sunday to walk into a church (especially an Anglican one, once the bastion of respectability and colonial authority) is not there simply to appear “okay” to everyone in their neighbourhood, but there to be transformed. They would definitely agree with Taylor that it is emptiness to proclaim a faith that is not embodied. This is a hopeful but not naïve faith. This is a holistic faith that proclaims, “Humanity hath the rule of right within. What is lacking is only that they attend to it. But what constitutes the Christian life? It is the exercise of a holy life where dogma be kept in the shade and faith be kept in the light.”

Amen!

-Clarity