Your Parish is Your Nation

The only way forward is small.


Those words might seem an odd contradiction in a world that seems to be growing ever larger. The Internet sprawls across the globe connecting tiny villages in rural India to mighty skyscrapers in New York City and everywhere in between. Populations are bursting at the seams. Homes are larger. Big box stores loom and crowd out mom-and-pop shops in the world we know.


Corporations like Black Rock gobble up the globe with increasing speed, and it seems we are on a lightening-fast path to bigger, bigger, bigger - one huge united globe.


One large undefinable mass.


Our news has expanded too. Gone are the days when you would sip your coffee over a few local articles in the newspaper. We hardly even gossip about our neighbours anymore. Now we check our social media and become delighted or outraged at things happening all across the globe.


But all of this is ultimately an illusion. It’s a modern day Tower of Babel with classic Tower of Babel results. When Louis and Clark explored the West they would often have to pass through five or more translators to reach an Indian who spoke French and then a Frenchman who spoke English. Anyone who has been to Walmart lately can relate to this. No one speaks the same language.


Yet unlike those Indian tribes Louis and Clark encountered, who were totally independent and interacted with other tribes mostly for either trade or war, we must somehow navigate this huge confederation of countries living in our backyard and on our tiny screens daily.


Suddenly, election results in New York don’t feel so far away. If China manufactures all our antibiotics, I suppose we are forced to care about what’s happening in China. It’s all connected.


We are living in the Tower. We are consumed by it. But the Tower of Babel didn’t last and neither will its current incarnation - because no matter how advanced humans become, we simply cannot out-pace God.


The Tower will come down. The answer to the question of when or how or where is a mystery to us, but its ultimate collapse is assured.


Terrific! We didn’t want it anyway. In fact, I hear you ask, "Can I do anything to give that collapsing devil-tower a push?"


Yes.


Simply remember who you are. Remember who God created you to be. He created you to be part of a family. “Nation” comes from the root “natal” meaning to give birth.


Many of us don’t feel like birth-buddies with a Somali living in Minnesota or a Sikh living in London. We don’t share common values, histories or future goals.


"But my family is awful!" I hear some of you say. "I have nothing in common with them either. They don’t share my values, history or goals. I hardly see them."


Sadly, in the Tower where everyone speaks a different language, this is the reality we confront.


The consuming mass of chaos resides in our own flesh and blood.


So where is your family of common values? Your nation?


May I propose it is to be found in your parish or church. Long ago in the Southern United States, we had things called plantations. They functioned like small, self-sufficient towns.


The owner and his family lived in the main house.  Workers (yes, and slaves) had their own homes and small communities dotted around the acreage. The plantation grew its own food, produced its own wool and cotton for clothing, typically had a cash crop and yes, it had a parish.


Everyone would gather on Sunday mornings. Perhaps several nearby plantations would share a central parish. A priest, reverend or preacher would be hired for the parish or perhaps would travel among several parishes in the area.


People attending these churches knew exactly who they were and what they were working towards. They weren’t just Americans, they were, for example, Virginians or even more specifically residents of the King plantation, and naturally, the parish found there.


For generations they lived like this. They had a common language, a common history, a shared faith and they shared goals for the future. Perhaps their goals were expanding the cash crop, patching the roofs or opening up more space in the graveyard.


This identity and total independence from the outside world was a way of life these people were willing to die for when the North infringed on it. The Confederates were famously outnumbered by the North but never out-fought. Behind the Confederate army lay their homes, their family and their parish.


"Okay, but we don’t have plantations anymore," you say.

​Yes, but we have parishes. We have people we see every week who share our history, our language and our goals.


This is where our family is and our focus should be there too. And I don’t mean exclusively our spiritual focus. Our friendships, business endeavours, hiring pool, trade center, and so forth, should exist within the hundred or so people we know in our parish.