“...not with a bang, but with a whimper?” – T.S. Eliot
These days the grizzled man frets birthdays and anniversaries, particularly if they’re his. They speak to him of mortality; they stimulate erratic slides between merry and maudlin; they whisper historic details; they harken to triumphs and fiascos, fortunes and follies, hallmarks not just of family but of other institutions that have surrounded him forever: His baseball team; his alma mater; the Boy Scout movement.
And, ah yes, the church and its countless fragments that are always celebrating something, leaving behind a couple of millennia of feasts and jubilees, joyous and sombre. That’s because it’s pretty old.
Old enough to get it right, right? Old enough to wonder about all the evident wrinkles so frequently discounted, about shortness of breath so often denied, about blatant fatigue habitually ignored as it pretends that the universe is paying attention to it, is conning itself into believing that it remains indelibly relevant to the family, the community, the world, in ways it did when it was young and vigorous; when it was distinct from the Red Cross, the Elks Club, and the bowling league.
Still, the old fellow peacefully reminds himself that powers, nations, and ideas are routinely built and dismantled, not necessarily because they’re capricious but because their missions end, their roles in human history fulfilled or redundant, stage exit is indicated and actors need to depart. Could it be time, maybe, for new plots and players to inspire audiences and persuade animated participation? When old scenarios fail to address the needs of a people, a people will go out the door.
One of those people not long ago confessed that she doesn’t much buy tickets to the big show anymore, that after near-80 years of devotion to the cause she’s come to see less and less what the drama’s fuss is all about. Its artists don’t get to her anymore, their scripts and movements futile, the stagecraft juvenile, the props inane. The founding father’s story has, for her, been translated into a bland camaraderie she figures she can get from the gang at the coffee shop, and that her grandkids are more likely to get at the hockey rink. Alas, the intended mystery, transcendence, contemplation have been suppressed and traded for steeples, stained glass and mawkish sentimentality.
Meanwhile, the old gent ponders who’s part of the question and who’s likely to be an answer to the institution’s accelerated fade. In his worst moments he thinks that he, with some other people, is likely to drift benignly into sure oblivion. In times of optimism he’ll show some willingness to stir a pot or two and to think on some sort of creative contribution to a redefinition of primal fidelity and purpose. He believes there’s motivation for renewal; he’s seen it in the eyes of a lot who have jumped ship. And after all, we’re told this whole thing started small and with lots of controversial baggage.
One of the church‘s ageless tenets has been that there are lots worse fates than death, and they include ruinous, decay-ridden, inglorious cave-ins. The founder was found of declaring his imaginings “...not of this world.” well the world seems to have turned that on its ear, and welcomed a realm of backslapping, budgets and bake sales.
So where does the foregoing harangue leave a world of pretty country chapels, soaring urban cathedrals and the very human entities they’ve been enfolding for centuries?
Time, one suspects, will shortly tell if some kind of revised inspiration can emerge to peacefully produce peace, tolerance, contentment, a new honour and a fresh mandate that directs and encourages a civil society.
The old gent, on a good day, thinks it could happen.
Of course, on bad days, he’s just an old grump.
Peter MacRae is a retired Anglican cleric and erstwhile journalist. He lives in New Glasgow.
