A Volley from the Canon, Number 113, Hospice and Nursery

A VOLLEY FROM THE CANON, NUMBER 113

PARALLEL DEVELOPMENT: HOSPICE AND NURSERY

We Episcopalians should be good at handling generational shifts by now. We’ve had considerable experience, most of it negative, and now we get to find out whether we’ve learned anything or not.

We had a doozy back when I was the young generation. At that time, there was a vast chasm between my generation and that of our parents. We seemed to have nothing in common and talked right past one another, with little comprehension. We had huge altercations over tiny matters, which seemed of critical importance to both sides. In the Church, a “little” thing like revising the Book of Common Prayer, long overdue, split us right down the middle, and generationally. The only way bishops found to get the “new” BCP into pews in most churches was to require it, forcibly. Yet in so doing, we sacrificed a very large chunk of our membership, a great loss to all. It became as if the 1928 BCP was somehow bad, a harmful thing to be rid of a quickly and thoroughly as possible. In fact, though it needed revision and updating, that book and others very like it had inspired and sustained our church for generations past.

So now I’m the old guy. I have a modicum of sympathy now with my parents, but do I want to cling as desperately, arbitrarily, and belligerently to my ways of doing things, to the exclusion and rejection of the young people? Conversely, to make a fulfilling place in the church for young adults and their peers, do we need to alienate and run out all of the people my age and older? My hope is that this time, we can try harder to minister to both.

Oldsters, hang it up! We have to allow change in our church’s ways, if we are going to survive as a church past our own funerals. We aren’t going to comprehend or appreciate all of these changes, but neither did our parents respond favorably to ours. It is part of the natural order.

Youngsters, have patience with us relics. You need us, too, while we last. Create a space in church life for your tastes and interests, and leave us a space for ours, too. We need to find a way to be church together, even if we do it separately for a time.

As a church, we are going to have to multi-task for a decade or so. We are going to have to be “nursery” for The Episcopal Church 7.3, or whatever, that is a-borning, and put aside our anxiety long enough to let it become whatever it is to be. This calls for faith on our part, that God is indeed in charge, not us, and that God will abide with her church. At the same time, we are also going to have to be “hospice” for the old church that is passing away. We must provide a place of solace, peace, and comfort for those of us whose sensibilities are of an earlier time that is fading, but not yet past.

It is complicated, but much better than the alternatives before us. In the end, the gyres of the generations will turn, with us or without us. The ways of neither group are bad or objectionable, really. They are just different.