Good Friday

April 10, Good Friday and memories of many many Good Fridays flow through my mind. As a child we would be going to Church as a family, walking down the street and around the corner. Growing up Anglican in a City where the Anglican Churches dominated the landscape I probably thought everybody was Anglican. In reality, Protestant Churches like the United Church, the Presbyterian Church and others exceeded the number of Anglicans. The Roman Catholic Church was not as large as the Anglican Church in numbers but in total the Anglicans were not the largest group I would suspect. During Lent our priest would usually exchange pulpits with the priest at Holy Rosary Roman Catholic Church. It was ecumenical long before Vatican II. Looking back the Anglican Church in London was perhaps "High Church" in many parts of the City but coming to Ottawa twenty five years later I found that Ottawa was also "High Church." At least the Churches that we attended in those early years. It made my husband more conscious of his United Church upbringing and he wanted to share that with our daughter. I was in this in-between moment in time. After divorce was legalized I thought through the idea and decided that Churches should really get out of the marriage business. Leave it to the Civil authorities and it would certainly have saved the Church a lot of grief in the years since. But I was young and my method of expression was just to not be part of something that I believed was straying from "What Would Jesus Do." Then the decision was made to ordain women and I was not so sure of that either although I have come to believe that gender should not determine who should lead a congregation but that would take many years. Hence, my husband's thought that he would take our daughter to the United Church came at a time when I was quite ambivalent with regard to Church attendance and I simply went along with them. Our eldest daughter to that point had been baptized Anglican, attended the Anglican Church every week and had been attending Roman Catholic Schools. Nevertheless she fitted in perfectly at the United Church. She found it quite folksy I believe and quickly made friends with all the children that she was now at school with in the Public School system. I considered keeping her in the Roman Catholic system but they actually did not have spare room for tuition paying students at the local school although did not give a firm no wanting to wait until Fall to decide. Instead I did make the decision and enrolled her in the local public school in French Immersion. The United Church was small and I, coming from a large city Church, stayed on the fringes as much as I was able letting my husband lead the way; after all it was his Church. I was simply occupying a spot in the pew of a Church that I really did not know and, to be honest, did not really want to become overly involved in. I became a closet Anglican and would eventually return for early morning service to my own local Anglican Church before attending the United Church later in the day as a family. My husband and daughters became part of the Church Choir and very much enjoyed their part in his United Church.

But I digress, this is another Good Friday and we will not attend a Service. There aren't any and it would not be a good idea to have a service. COVID-19 is amongst us and pulling us away from all the most meaningful parts of our lives. The Church which has been the source of strength through the eons has had to exist without its flock. Except we are still here and still tithing (those of us who do). I have been writing about the possibility that Mother Nature has inflicted COVID-19 upon us and I actually do believe that. After all only Mother Nature or God (and are they one in the same?) can really create life although we occasionally work away at that in a scientific way but we are simply creating a shortcut between two elements that did not come together naturally when we do create life. When the Pope decided that COVID-19 was an act of Mother Nature I decided in my heart that perhaps the time has come for me to realize that my Anglicanism has really evolved into Roman Catholicism; I share so much of my beliefs with the Roman Catholic Church and my Anglicanism just doesn't quite fit in with the Anglican Church that I currently tithe to. But will I ever, at 74 years of age, move beyond that as a thought. Time will tell.

Another Good Friday and we remember Our Lord and His death upon the Cross but soon in just two days we will experience the joy of His resurrection. I feel these thoughts so much more deeply even than I did as a child and young adult. Fifteen years now of reading the wills of my ancestors and indeed the Blake wills of many people's ancestors has given me a sense of the depth of faith of people even just fifty years ago. It is this faith that brought them through so much and it will bring us through COVID-19. The knowledge that the earth is ours and we have dominion over it should be tempered with respect for the earth; respect for Mother Nature. Let us hope that as the world opens up once again to the free movement of people that our first thoughts are for how to keep the fresh skies that we are being treated with once again.