To the clergy of the Diocese of Saskatchewan

Dear friends,

This is to wish you a wonderful summer and to share some ruminations.

Having sat for eight days of impassioned speeches at the General Synod in Winnipeg, I was happy last week to get out into the quiet of the woods to pray. It was good to let the maelstrom of confused ideas and experiences settle and go silent like waxwings. The prairie crocuses and snow geese were gone but the Saskatchewan lilies were out, those faithful solitaries, improbable daubs of tropical color in the northern forest, appearing as if by appointment for their fifteen day visitation before retreating for another year.  It was good to be home.

I was glad to get away from that convention centre, out of downtown, out into the woods, not to go somewhere simpler but somewhere quieter, with a less insistent rhythm and pulse.

There is nothing simple about the woods. Their elegant negotiations of order are so finely calibrated that even a child can see that everything depends on everything else. You don’t need to have a hawk’s eye view to see that nature, even in its profligacy, violence, cruelty and caprice, is a hymn to order and the genius of its Creator.

These thoughts seemed far from the convention centre floor with its television lights and live bloggers breathlessly passing notes through the ether to internet cafes in Montreal and Mombassa. And yet it was there, in that windowless eleventh floor ballroom, that we were called to think about the sacramental meaning of the natural world.

“I am the vine, you are the branches.”

“The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed.”

“This is my body.”

We talked a lot at the General Synod about the implications of baptism, that Christ has grafted us into a whole new set of complicated relationships in his body to which we needed to respond. Nobody was in doubt that the body is fevered and disoriented at the moment. Our place in the Anglican Communion was never very far from our minds.

From one perspective this was a General Synod at which nothing happened—at least nothing of obvious consequence, blazing illumination or historic moment. The Synod tidied and tweaked and consolidated earlier initiatives, rekindled some old missionary loves, and decided, somewhat grudgingly, to give its troubled marriage to the Anglican Communion another chance. A few trial balloons were floated and referred away to committees. We elected an honorable man as Primate in a vote for continuity. We welcomed a new National Indigenous Bishop as a harbinger of good things to come but he had already been with us for a while and was already a much-loved member of the family. We had lunch with our Lutheran relatives. No nettles were grasped, no Rubicons were crossed, no sacred cows were slain, no blood was left on the floor, nobody stormed out.

In short, it was a miracle.

It takes only one match to begin a conflagration in a dry forest. [1] Our Communion has been drying out for a long time. In Winnipeg, we were all smokers, and a few of us lit up, but we went home with the old growth intact, hoping for rain.

This was a disappointment to many people for a variety of reasons. On the left and the right, there were plenty of people who wanted to witness the final rupture, the definitive apostasy, the moment of liberation, the beginning of a new world, clean and free from that bearded old wood.

It came close. After having passed a much-amended procedural motion which ended up stating the obvious (that same-sex blessings are not in the Creeds), the bishops defeated by two votes a motion to allow local dioceses to authorize the blessing of committed same-sex unions. Whether one agreed with this decision or not, there is no question that it bought time for the Anglican Church of Canada to find a way to walk together with the Anglican Communion. Encouragingly, from the beginning of this debate to the end of it, there was nothing but good will shown to Anglicans with same-sex attractions. Their full membership and inclusion in the Church, which derives from baptism, was simply not at issue.

Our condition as a Church and Communion remains grave. The doctors quarrel among themselves. We agree on neither diagnosis nor cure. Can the doctrine of Christ be separated like a yolk from its egg? Perhaps on our knees, in fear and trembling, in a theological environment galaxies away from the aridities of this present generation, but surely not by a vote of hands in a political forum. I fear we are engineering a moral and spiritual habitat for our children without a clear understanding of what we are doing. Take the bees from the wood for a few seasons and see if on your return there is anything else living.

It would be a mistake to ascribe our malaise to other people’s confusions, errors, or wickedness. We have plenty of beams to pluck from our own eyes. Our relationships with others are not merely public and political. Their complexities and balances are just as much inside us as outside of us. Dante locates the beginning of our spiritual journey in a “dark wood.” He is speaking not of a landscape but an ‘inscape’. If we can get our inner, spiritual ecology right, if we are grounded in prayer and the penitential adoration of God, our relation to the world around us will take care of itself.

Along with all the members of the Saskatchewan delegation, I was conscious of your prayers. We knew that we were being carried along by your intercession and those of others across the country who kept watch with us. Thank you for upholding us this way. We never doubted that our unity in Christ must be grounded in the faith once delivered, and were careful to oppose those appeals which sought to set the Spirit against the Word.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has gone on sabbatical to meditate and write on the spirituality of Dostoevsky.  In the fevered circumstances of the moment, there is something striking about this.  Surely the Archbishop is taking his lead from the Lord who himself disappeared to a mountainside to pray, to get away from the joyless world of swords and rhetoric.

I hope you will follow their example this summer, and if Dostoevsky doesn’t call to you, that you will at least catch a few fish, pick some berries, enjoy your family, consider the lilies of the field, converse with the bees, pray and rest.

Anna joins me in wishing you a blessed summer.

Yours in Christ,

Anthony Burton
Bishop of Saskatchewan

[1] Fomeus ille Ursus.