It Takes a Village: Can The Church: Towards a Common Vision Help Raise North American Ecumenists?

I. Introduction: Born of “Reception and the Spirit”

I begin by acknowledging that we are gathered on the traditional lands of the Tongva people. We give thanks for their reverence for and stewardship of this land throughout the ages.

I am honored to be invited to speak to you who are my mentors and colleagues, friends of decades and newly met fellow travellers on the ecumenical road. It is a particular gift for me to respond to the rich presentations of John Gibaut, and I am so sorry he is not here in Burbank with us. He would have been a warm and lively presence in our midst. I am also sorry he is not here because I “knew him when.”

Before he was the Rev. Canon Dr. John St-Helier Gibaut, Director of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches (WCC), he was John St-Helier Gibaut, a young postulant for ordination in the Anglican Church of Canada and a student at Trinity College, Toronto. I was a young candidate for ordination in the United Church of Canada and a student at Emmanuel College, Toronto. Thanks to the ecumenical partnership of the seven schools of the Toronto School of Theology, he and I were in several classes together, including Professor Margaret O’Gara’s course, “Christian Theologies in Dialogue” at the Basilian St. Michael’s College, where we first met a brand-new document, a little square booklet with green swirls on it, called Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry (BEM).¹ He and I did not really get to know one another until we found ourselves in the same Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) unit in the summer of 1983 at a large mental health hospital in Toronto.

Some of you may be familiar with CPE. It is an intense twelve-week full-time program to introduce students of ministry not only to spiritual care theologies and practices, usually in a hospital, care home, or prison, but also, and perhaps more pertinently, to introduce students of ministry to themselves. Our educational supervisor was the Rev. Elizabeth (Betty) Kilbourn, one of the first women ordained in the Anglican Church of Canada. She was a force of nature with hair that made mine look tame; when it came to dress, she rarely fancied a clerical collar, and her plentiful mascara was often streaked with tears of joy or compassion. She could also see right through us. She loved us with that tough love that is determined to bring out the best in people and never let us get away with an iota of self-deception.

The other students in our small group included young postulants for Roman Catholic priesthood. I was paired with one of these to serve a geriatric ward. Together we collaborated to create gentle liturgies for the ward residents. Mark played the guitar and introduced us to the emerging Catholic contemporary music of the day. Thanks to Mark, if I live long enough to find myself with failing faculties in geriatric care, I am sure I will be belting out, to the dismay of staff and residents, off-key renditions of “Earthen Vessels,” “Take, Lord, Receive,” and of course “Here I Am, Lord,” as those St. Louis Jesuit tunes and lyrics have lodged themselves in my long-term memory bank.

My 1983 summer ended with a Greyhound Bus trip to Vancouver to attend the Theological Students’ Conference held in conjunction with the Sixth Assembly of the WCC, where we worshiped with the Lima Liturgy and learned the chants of Taizé in the bright yellow tent that always reminded me of a mustard seed, a tiny potent symbol of Christian fruitfulness and possibility.

Why did I drag you along on this thirty-one-year-old excursion down memory lane, with a tale that pales in comparison with the rich memoirs collected in the fiftieth anniversary number of the Journal for Ecumenical Studies?² As we have begun to...