“Eagles effortlessly ride thermals; hummingbirds pause in midair; quail burst into flight heart-stoppingly. Taken all together, the flight paths of birds bind the planet together like 100 billion filaments, tree to tree and continent to continent.”
Thus speaks the American writer Jonathan Franzen, in a wonderful article entitled Why Birds Matter featured in a recent sermon by Rev. Bonnie Dowling. Now you may be wondering why I am starting a piece on connection, presumably human connection, with an image of birds. I do so because it is a beautiful image and an apt metaphor for the notion of coinherence, an idea that grows in importance as we draw nearer to Synod.
While the number of “filaments” may be impossible to calculate, we humans—like the birds—also move from place to place, weaving thousands of little imperceptible silvery strands together. One of these places of movement is in and between our parishes. If perceived from a bird’s-eye view, the movements of believers in and out of churches would form a web so vast it too would encircle the globe.
But what exactly is coinherence? Although the term, coined by Charles Williams, is crudely defined by the Collins Dictionary as “the act of inhering together,” it could be better understood as the acceptance and recognition of these intertangled strands. The recognition that, as St. Anthony of the Desert puts it, “our life and our death are with our neighbour.”
In the past few years, I have been fortunate enough to have visited many Anglican parishes across the country—some with booming congregations and others filled with a small handful of faithful churchgoers. Although these parishes have each differed greatly in terms of location, liturgical aesthetic, physical size, congregation size, the act of practicing coinherence has been evident at the heart of each one. Within each parish, congregants are sharing food, offering prayers for each other, giving and receiving care of various sorts (mowing each other’s lawns, knitting socks etc.), exchanging stories, and singing together. When someone is sick or unwell, another will offer to fill their place in worship. Within our parishes, coinherence is, in many respects, our way of sharing in the Love of Christ poured out for us on the Cross. But how is this coinherence being reflected in the life of our Diocese as a whole? I believe that this is a practice we need to strengthen.
All too often, and across our whole country, I have heard Anglican parishioners proclaim with sad remorse that “our Church is dying.” It is my belief that this will only be true if we let it be. Of course, there are many social factors which have impacted this decrease in Church attendance: Covid, the true and real evils the church has been involved with in the last few centuries, the deconstructivist narrative popular among folks of my generation, the loss of churchgoing in public consciousness—the list goes on. However, it does not seem that our acceptance of this dwindling has done much at all to bring people closer to God, and to recognize the overwhelming truth that “all that is assumed is healed.”
Ben Crosby, an Episcopalian priest currently undergoing a PhD at McGill, writes: “Everyone is beloved of God, who sent his Son to bring good news to a fallen and suffering world. There can be no doubt this world is suffering from evil and despair. So why on earth would we, who have been entrusted to share the hope of Christ, withhold or obscure it where it is so clearly needed?”
Here I want to make clear that I do not believe that we are attempting to withhold or obscure this hope. However, I do believe that in order to effectively share this hope with our communities, we ought to join together in the work of evangelism. To clarify, this vocation of evangelism which I believe is necessary to take up is not the violent evangelism popular among Western Christians over the last few centuries, but rather the type of evangelism proposed by St. Gregory the Great.
In his Book of Pastoral Rule, St. Gregory suggests that “every preacher should be ‘heard’ more by his deeds than by his words.” He continues, “moreover, the footprint of his good living should be that path that others follow rather than the sound of his voice showing them where to go.” I am convinced it is due time to forsake our “tiptoeing” and to step boldly (with care), establishing a path that can be followed. A path, grounded in a Love, which knows no bounds and a sure hope in “the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”
In order to engage in this vocation, laid out for us as a Diocese, we ought to strengthen our web by practicing coinherence through prayer. There are countless ways we can do this; however, a few options are: praying for the Diocese and for all churches in our neighbourhoods, attending each other’s patronal festivals, going to prayer groups, and visiting each other’s sanctuaries (we are lucky enough to have several which are quite spectacular). In our life of prayer, these words of intercession, sent heavenward, meet each other in the air like birds casting silver filaments over the earth. This mystical binding is the web which holds us together—which reminds us of our nature as kin in Christ.
One other aspect of parish life which can support this Diocesan vocation is the acknowledgement of kinship in presence. Here the opportunity presents itself for parishioners to attend social gatherings at various churches – for instance St. George’s Wakefield Halloween Family Fun Dance (Friday, October 23, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. at the Petersfield Hall), or Smells and Belles at St. Michael and All Angels, or the Slater MacQuire Lecture Series at St. Margaret’s (I speak only of the Churches I know but there are so many which host wonderful events). We can also join in the tradition of Mothering Sunday (this year it lands on March 7th) and visit our beautiful St. John’s Cathedral. When we recognize the ties that we have to each-other by being present in each other’s communities, we become more able to walk together.
As we turn towards each other in prayer and presence, as a Diocese, we can begin to truly coinhere. In this way, we become strong enough to carry ourselves and our communities forward into the uncertain future. In fact, in this practice we can weave those ephemeral silvery filaments so tightly they become one great refractory surface, reflecting to the world the infinite Love of the Divine and the sure Hope he gives us.
ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who by thy Holy Spirit didst preside in the Council of the blessed Apostles, and hast promised, through thy Son Jesus Christ, to be with thy Church to the end of the world: We beseech thee to be present with the Synod of this Diocese about to be assembled in thy Name. Save its members from all error, ignorance, pride, and prejudice; and of thy great mercy vouchsafe so to direct, govern, and sanctify them in their deliberations by thy Holy Spirit, that through thy blessing the Gospel of Christ may be faithfully preached and obeyed, the order and discipline of thy Church maintained, and the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour enlarged and extended. Grant this, we beseech thee, through the merits and mediation of the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Taken from the Book of Common Prayer for General, Provincial, or Diocesan Synods).
