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Toronto, ON
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Stepping Out

SARA BOYLES
Last September I announced I was leaving Holy Trinity as incumbent this year. It is hard to believe it is this year and that my leaving is coming up in less than 2 months. All winter I have watched the community grapple with this and wondered, at times, if we would ever get to the place where we could celebrate the time we have had together. I have been anxious about the community getting on with whatever needs to happen next. I can now report I am aware, in a new way, of my own wrestling with the same questions. Once again, the inside and the outside worlds collide and I can witness to the marvel of this creation and this universe. We all seem to be getting to the celebration place (and I know that Merylie and many others are working hard at it in secret).

It hit me at the Circles of Support and Accountability Celebration Day last week that I am really leaving and I am leaving a wonderful community of support and friendship. This is a magnificent place where hope is nurtured and people are held in their struggles. At Celebration Day there was laughter and applause as man after man reported living successfully in community for 13 years - 8 years - ten days. These are men for whom society had little hope and little encouragement. This is good news for women, children and all of us. These are men who have not only changed their own lives but "live out loud" in the work of promoting healthy and safe community.

I compare their hope with our hope for change in the Anglican communion. Even though the Easter scriptures hammer home inclusion, our Anglican church is in this very resistant place. It threatens to spew out many who have been able to hold a "faint hope" for belonging. Last week Jennifer eloquently talked of personal decisions that she and Susie face and the environment which they seek for their daughter. The Psalm "How long God, how long" feels like a joke rather than a prayer.

In my final days here I want to name aloud that my local church, this place, works for inclusion and change, not a change that threatens unity but seeks a unity based on honesty around the same sex questions before us and an integrity between people's lives and their rhetoric. (My comments however aren't limited simply to the current national questions about blessings). I want my bishops to step out, not only declare their positions and truths behind closed doors but to question whether unity based on secret keeping, silence and lock step movement has value for anyone. I would rather know they are tearing their hair out with one another as they work towards some kind of accommodations for the great variety of who we are. God's world is multifaceted and magnificent. Where are the eyes of the Anglican Communion that its leaders can't proclaim that?

Sara

November 30, 1999