from here
optimus prime, I’ve been struggling with your responses on this thread.
You begin by stating that the Covenant Agreement’s purpose is not to fix or address the current issues confronting the Anglican Communion—and we’ve certainly had that pounded into our heads over the past two years.
In fact, nothing at all is supposed to fix or address the current issues confronting the Anglican Communion—we are all supposed to live with the new facts on the ground and continue in conversation as a church. I see that. Same sex blessings and various other actions of TEC and Canada are in a period of reception, and if we all keep meeting and conversing, we’ll be living into the tension of the way church is.
But then, later on, after you’ve stated again that the Covenant is not supposed to be dealing with current issues—and I understand that and have almost from the beginning of the process—you make a plea for all of us to value the Covenant and work with the Covenant and critique the Covenant and offer constructive proposals for amendments of the Covenant.
And I just can’t understand why or how any thinking conservative Anglican is supposed to do that.
Why is the Covenant important? To me—as I look both at the past five years of tortuous process that we have all been engaged in and the long stretch of future ahead of us in the coming decades and centuries of human existence, I can see nothing at all that the Covenant will accomplish, other than sit there. I have tried to wrap my mind around the Covenant and look at it from all angles as to what the Covenant might accomplish, and I can’t see it. It may be that I am too American for it—that it is wrong of me to think that the Covenant should actually accomplish something rather than simply “be.” I have often been told that I think too much about doing and not simply being, and so perhaps the Covenant’s worth is in its being or existence.
I’ll give you a personal example that is not connected with church that articulates my confusion and frustration. It’s as if we’ve all been plunged into the desert with no survival tools, or we’re in the aftermath of a trainwreck, or we’re in a burning building or [insert any crisis here], and a small child approaches me with a leaf.
The child holds out the leaf for my examination, my critique, my impressions . . . but I am focused on other matters.
I am instructed by another adult earnestly that children are important—Jesus loved and valued children—and I try to redirect my attention back to the child and the leaf. But it’s hard—the flames are roaring, the lions approach, the train is creaking, etc, etc, etc,—and I cannot concentrate on the leaf.
I am told earnestly by the adult that God made the leaf. Leaves are valuable—they serve incredibly useful purposes in nature and offer shelter, shade, even water. And I agree. And I struggle to examine the leaf and comment on the leaf and offer constructive proposals for amendments of the leaf—but the flames, the metal grinding, the roars, etc, etc, etc, are really getting into my consciousness at this point and, while I am conscious of my failure to appropriately value the leaf and child—as I often fail—I cannot look at the leaf any longer.
For the purposes of this situation—the train wreck, the blazing building, the desert survival—the leaf is not merely to the periphery of my interest or focus, it is actually of non-importance. It solves nothing, does nothing for the future, it merely sits there, looking green and lovely.
I know that many Christians are able to jump in here and instruct me about the spiritual significances of leaves and I’m sorry that I’m so unspiritual as to not see how deeply and abstractly important the Covenant is, but I simply cannot see it.
In charity to those who view the Covenant as vital and meaningful, I can only assume that we are living in different realities. Where I hear lions roaring, the Covenanters are hearing the barkings of a toy poodle within a fence. Where I hear the train groaning and creaking as it prepares to slide further down the embankment, the Covenanters hear a house settling comfortably on its foundations in the night. Where I feel the heat and crackle of flames drawing near, they feel the heat of a tea kettle just finishing up some steaming Earl Gray. Those are the circumstances, I suppose, that enable the Covenanters to be able to take the leaf, explore the leaf, discuss the leaf, and admire the leaf.
I’m not going to try any more to convince others that we are in dire circumstances in the Communion. I recognize now that if people don’t, then they don’t, and there’s nothing really that I can do about that.
And so in one sense, I have sympathy for those who are able to sit down with the Covenant and offer constructive proposals for amendments of the Covenant. In their world, it’s an important document and meaningful to them and it must be frustrating to hear others get the purpose of the Covenant wrong, or otherwise blanketly critique it without offering detailed possibilities for improvement of it. I hear people instructing others to “critique the Covenant” or offer amendments and ideas for improvement—in fact there were several outraged cries from various conservatives in the Communion that Gafcon had not “mentioned” or “responded to” the Covenant.
But you see what happens when people “respond to the Covenant” or “mention” the Covenant who don’t actually see what the Covenant’s worth is??? They produce the Response of GAFCON—and then you tell them that their response or mention is not good enough, that they did not offer constructive proposals for amendment.
But that’s what happens when someone like me or someone else responds to the Covenant when we cannot wrap our minds around its value or meaning or import. The response is pointless and meaningless.
Its as if I am asked to respond to the leaf in the midst of the crisis. The very most that I can manage is—through gritted teeth—“thank you, sweetie, that’s so lovely—are you giving it to me, thank you, I’ll put it safe right here in my pocket.” In other words—no real response at all, because I am who I am, in the situation in which I find myself, experiencing the reality that I am experiencing, and with the ignorant, or non-appreciative mind that I have.
The seven Primates whose names are attached to the document are not dolts, and I expect that they are Christians. But they simply do not see what you are seeing enough to be capable of responding in the way that you wish.
I can’t offer anything constructive to your comments, optimus prime. I hear the frustration in your comments, and I have no answers. I know that you’re sincere, and I have seen from your past comments that you must be a traditional Anglican in theology.
I am dumbfounded by our differences, then, on this issue of the Covenant. I recognize that we have much in common—but I simply cannot see what you are seeing in the Covenant.
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The leaf analogy is brilliantly conceived of. As I read it, I was led to the image of a dog or a cat carefully going out and killing a bird or a mouse, bringing it inside, and laying it carefully and lovingly on your best pillow, as an act of love. Problem is, the rat is dead (or mouse, or bird), never to be resurrected. So there it is, on your best pillow, stinking up the whole house. You can thank the dog, or you can scream, but then you have to bury the rat, because its useless.