Out of Sorts by Sarah Bessey

Author:Sarah Bessey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Howard Books

8

An Unexpected Legacy

ON THE ANCIENT PRACTICES

Part of my experience in sorting out my faith has been to remove and repurpose, to discard and to reclaim. But when it came to my heritage as a believer, there has also been discovery and newness, renewal in the ancient paths long forsaken. It felt like opening up an attic and finding treasures that were mine by birthright.

* * *

As a child, I liked to stand in the front row of our church. I kicked and stomped my small feet with abandon, causing the overhead projector to wobble precariously on the folding chair. We met in the community center on Sunday mornings to worship together and then on Friday nights at the leisure center to play floor hockey after our discipleship classes. We considered ourselves first-generation Christians, but really, we weren’t. We just didn’t know our heritage. We didn’t know that others had come before us. The Bible spoke of a great cloud of witnesses, but we were unacquainted with them. We felt like lonely pilgrims instead of a vast company.

We were children of the renewal movement in Canada. To me, church wasn’t stuffy or boring. Church had electric guitars and a keyboard. Preaching was tailored for us—the ones who didn’t have a history of higher education and academics. We were middle-class and working-class.

Growing up as a charismatic evangelical, I had an understanding of spiritual formation that could be summed up in these steps:

1. Make sure you have your own personal quiet time reading the Word.

2. Spend time in prayer born from your heart and life.

3. Go to church on Sundays.

Simple and straightforward disciplines to practice, and life-changing for our family because we were so new to Scripture, to prayer, to church. And I still practice these disciplines today—even the church one (most of the time). But eventually I discovered the depth and width of Christian spiritual formation through the ages.

Even though I grew up in church, I didn’t learn a hymn until my twenties. My pews were folding chairs. I had never heard of the Book of Common Prayer. My only exposure to liturgy and the Church calendar was through my love of literature, coming across references in dog-eared Jane Austen novels, for instance. Bingley took possession of Netherfield before Michaelmas. What in the heck is Michaelmas? I wondered. In the days before Google, I found myself flipping the pages of an encyclopedia at the local library. Oh, a feast day. End of September. Who knew, eh?

* * *

Here in Canada, we know our seasons by the light. In the summertime, the sun rises at 4:30 in the morning, and it’s bright as day until long past when well-behaved tinies should be in their beds. In the winter, the sun begins to set at 3:30 in the afternoon and our nights stretch into cold morning stars. Every year, we go through the months of light and the months of dark, resolutely and steadily without argument. It’s simply what happens here. This is how we live.

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