From the Journal

Two Anglicans who attended the Third World Forum on Theology and Liberation in January said they emerged from the meeting with a greater sense of looking at mission and transformation from within their Canadian context.

Ms. Maybee and Ms. Ratcliffe also noted an address delivered by Steve de Gruchy of the University of KwaZulu-Natal which drew a connection between the sewage system and ecological accountability.

“Our thinking about sustainability must deal with sewage because we have to live with our waste. It cannot leave the globe. It hangs around and it comes back to haunt us,” said Mr. de Guchy in his speech. “Previous civilizations may have got away with flushing the problem downstream, but in a globalized world there is no downstream, or more correctly, we all live downstream.”

Every organisation eventually finds its niche in life; it’s taken the ACoC almost 500 years, but it has finally discovered its calling: sewage.

During the last 50 years the ACoC has worked diligently at generating and distributing sewage: feculence falls from on high to be shovelled and distributed evenly by diligent parish priests and wardens. After experiential discernment, conversation and prophetic posturing, congregations Canada wide repackage the gift, whereupon it floats, once more, gracefully to the surface at local and general synods – for recycling.

And thus, the circle of life continues in the ACoC; for a while, at least.