Building The Ship of Tolerance

About noon the next day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat; and while it was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw the heaven opened and something like a large sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners. In it were all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air. Then he heard a voice saying, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” But Peter said, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.” The voice said to him again, a second time, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This happened three times, and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven.

Acts 10:9-16, Lectionary reading for evening prayer, September 13th

Yesterday, I arrived in London and began my year with the Community of St. Anselm. The first faces I met looked like mine, they spoke with American accents, and even their tradition was comfortably Episcopalian. Two long-time benefactors of the Community, who retrieved me from the airport, and one of our administrators, a priest formerly from Texas. This was lovely, yes, but hardly the introduction I expected for a community of international, ecumenical pilgrims, met in the center of London. Then, I received a sort of old-school Facebook in my welcome packet: postage-stamp portraits with names, ages, nationalities, and church traditions. I must admit, I began to question each member of this new cohort of St. Anselm’s. I asked, What does being a Lutheran from Germany imply? How does an Anglican from South Sudan think? How will I relate to a Pentecostal from Uganda? What will they think of my own American-ness, my Episcopalian-ness?

I began, instinctively and like St. Peter, to label each person as acceptable or profane, as clean or unclean.

Before arriving, I knew that some members would be more charismatic, that many would like the contemporary music that annoys me, that some would also be discerning a call — but in a tradition that I would not choose and that would not choose me. Just as easily as Peter could rattle off the animals deemed unclean for Jews to eat, I could prattle on about the merits of a church with Bishops, priests, and a brief passing of the peace. I so easily could have marked each of my new Siblings as clean or somehow profane, I quieted my inclination to judge and define.

That is not the way of St. Anselm’s, I reminded myself. More importantly, that is not the way of Christ. While it may be easy to define someone before you understand them, and noble to understand before you define, the Community of St. Anselm intervenes and challenges us to begin with something even more beautiful than understanding or acceptance.

We begin with love.

Next week, under the guidance of Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, himself, I will choose each of my new Siblings and begin our relationships with love. I will embrace Lydia from Germany, Julius from Uganda, Tabitha from Pakistan, Vik the Baptist, Rachel the Methodist, Lei and Anna and David, the Anglicans, and say simply, I choose you. To each of the Integrated Members, who I have yet to meet, I choose you. Their response to me, I choose you.

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This afternoon most of us tried to stave off our culture shock and jet-lag with a walk along the Thames. We exited Lambeth Palace and turned left. Within fifteen minutes, we had found the National Theatre, then the Tate Modern, and we spotted the Globe. We crossed the Millennium Bridge and greeted St. Paul’s before following the Strand to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery, then Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. Two hours full of confirmed cultural treasures, pillars of the canon everyone, but a new, impermanent, floating installation struck me most.

Between the Tate’s smokestack and St. Paul’s dome sat a ship fitted with something like a large sheet: a sail made of panes of fabric decorated with children’s drawings. It’s artist, Emilia Kabakov, named it the Ship of Tolerance and, with a message of “bring[ing] people together, repairing broken relationships, establishing connections,” even I could not miss the similarity to yesterday’s reading from Acts. There, before me and my new Siblings, was a vessel powered by a sheet full of all the things that were good enough — not to kill and eat — but love, embrace, and choose.

So, it seems, I am now aboard a ship of tolerance, wrapped in something like a sheet full of creations that the world might deem unclean, but that God made and chose and marked as God’s own forever.

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On this second night, peace. – JFL