Silent Retreat notes:
Here in Toronto we call our transit system "The Better Way," and usually it is that, and then some: a remarkably clean, efficient enterprise. The fault is mine tonight. I miscalculated the bus route, forgot I'd be travelling in rush hour. (I'm a freelance writer; we don't have rush hour). So I'm the last to arrive at the retreat centre, just past 6 pm.
The others are gingerly, silently, finishing their dinner as I begin. A nun sweeps toward me. I naturally assume that I am already In Big Trouble.
"Sorry! Late!" I blurt, my mouth crumbly with homemade bread.
"You aren't late dear, you're just eating your dinner," she replies sweetly.
You learn to talk like that at Nun School. Even Anglican Nun School, I guess. Or Episcopalian, for all you Americans. Yes, they have nuns, too; their Sisters of St John the Divine run one of the best retreat centres in Canada, just north of downtown Toronto. So here I am...
A bell signals the end of dinner. Chairs scrape across the floor. Only my plate isn't empty. Assuming I'd break one of Benedict's rules by wasting food, I furtively shove a forlorn slice of Swiss cheese into my pocket and follow the others out the door-here just an hour before me, and already suave veterans.
*****
Robin Williams calls The Church of England "Catholic Lite--all the pomp without the guilt."
Yet there's nothing "lite" about it. As far as "light" is concerned, however, this exists abundantly.
During Morning Prayer, I sneak not-so-discreet glances at the poised and perfectly postured pray-ers, and simply cannot imagine them doing anything secretive, superstitious... "Mediterranean." Saints Rose of Lima or Maria Goretti wouldn't last long around here. Come to think of it, they didn't last long in the first place.
Despite this crisp, o-so-sane liturgy (or perhaps because of it) I'm in no danger of converting: I can't sing a note, and certainly can't afford the apparently prerequisite elocution lessons.
That said, I'm pleased to discover, as the morning goes on, that my cheeky, pre-retreat suspicions were correct: 30 years of Lindsay Anderson films and Monty Python skits really did prepare me to fake my way through an Anglican service without irreparably humiliating myself.
***** Reassuringly, a convent is a convent, on whatever shore of the Tiber: doilies everywhere; spindly-legged mahogany tables; pea-soup shag carpeting--the mismatched furniture of dubious pedigree coming together anyhow, like those freakish families on TV who adopt 35 kids from all over.
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