Don't be so Canadian, eh!

We came to an intersection. The light was red. I looked both ways and the road was empty, so I began to pull slowly forward.  ‘Wait for it!!’ said a voice from the seat beside me.  ‘Don’t be so Canadian, eh!’, I replied as I stopped moving.  And aren’t Canadians often cited as being more law abiding that might be the norm in other parts of the world!  But what really struck me about this conversation was that once the light had turned green, I found myself carefully checking to see that the cars, that had by this time appeared, were actually stopped at the traffic light!  As I drove away I was reflecting that I really trusted my own instincts over what  I was told to do by the ‘powers that be’ [in this case the stop light] And also that I gave that same right to others [or might it be that I didn’t really ‘trust’ them to stop???].  As I drove away down the road I found myself thinking that that incident in a way highlighted how I had come to see the world in general and religion in particular. 

As I have thought about this blog during the week, another incident came to mind that helped instil a reliance self-learning at an early age. My mother warned me not to touch the coal stove in the living area that we relied on for warmth during the winter months.  Of course I did… not because she told me not too, but because of a curiosity that I can feel even now in retrospect, to see what would happen. Suffice it to say, I didn’t repeat the experiment, but neither do I remember being punished for disobeying, just hearing the words ‘You won’t to that again will you.’

As an Anglican for the last 55 years, these familiar words written by Thomas Cranmer in the BCP [Book of Common Prayer] came to mind: "Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them,…” Certainly they were encouraging all who were listening back in the 1500s, to make up their own mind as to what the Scriptures had to teach. And so to today we still need to follow that injunction, not to go to readily along the given path but rather to come to our own conclusions as to what we really hear them saying. And even more importantly we have to give that same right to others!

To me, the second part of this is by far the most difficult. After all, I know what I hear the scriptures  saying. If you don’t agree with me, then obviously [to me, anyway] you must be misguided! BUT, if I am called upon to let you come to your own conclusions, then it suddenly become much more challenging. I am called on to give your right to your conclusions the same weight that I give my own - and the cause of much of the religious rancour in this world disappears! 

This requires both discernment and effort on the part of each one of us, as we do what Cranmer said, ‘read, mark, learn and inwardly digest’ until we come up with an understanding of the meaning of the Scriptures that is right for us. And we are also called to use those same skills in understanding the culture within which we live.

‘It is easy to get used to the morning news, habituated. But don't. The morning news is yours to alter.’ - Samantha Power, the former United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017