CAROA

The second major trip I made this spring was to Toronto (April 20-24) for the annual meeting of the Conference of Anglican Religious Orders in the Americas, or CAROA. Each year the leadership of North American Anglican religious orders meets for general discussions that last about a week.

Brs. Scott Borden (the Assistant Superior) and Andrew Colquhoun (in charge of formation for annually professed) and I drove to Toronto and were met there by Br. Robert Sevensky, the Superior. He was already there, after making his annual visitation to Holy Cross Priory in Toronto. The drive was nice -- up the NY State Thruway (I-87) to Albany, west on the Thruway (I-90) to Syracuse, north on I-81 to Watertown and the Thousand Islands (beautiful!), across into Canada and west on 401 to Toronto. It took a little more than 9 hours, but we didn't gun it. We had a nervous moment at the border, as Br. Scott had endured a Canadian inquisition the last time he entered Canada, but this time, all was sweetness and light.

The conference was at the new convent of the Sisterhood of St. John the Divine. They have a long and distinguished history in Canada, working in hospital administration, medicine and nursing care as well as in education and church work. Recently they have built a new convent on the grounds of St. John's Hospital, now separately administered. The convent is a wonderful modern building, light and airy and spacious. It is built around a quadrangle, with full guest facilities, the usual rooms for community life, a good library (with two copies of my book!), a wonderful infirmary built and equipped for (I believe) eight sisters, and best of all, a magnificent new chapel. SSJD has many gifted members, and music is among their gifts, so the chapel music was especially good. One of the sisters was a professional violinist, and gave a delightful concert Friday night with the music director of the convent at the keyboards (organ and piano).

The SSJD sisters were warm and welcoming. It was wonderful to catch up with old friends from the religious life across North America, and to make some new friends as well. The discussions centered around the agendas CAROA wants to pursue in the next couple of years. CAROA organizes the presence of the religious communities at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church (I helped with that last summer in Anaheim) and at the General Synod in Canada. The Canadian Church officially recognizes the religious communities in Canada (at this point there are three active: SSJD, OHC and the Sisters of the Church) by giving them two seats in Synod. The Episcopal Church does not.

The leadership of the conference was under the guidance of Fr. Gregory Fruewirth of the Order of Julian of Norwich, Fr. Donald Anderson, the General Secretary, who is a Canadian priest with wide experience in the ecumenical movement at the international level, and Ms. Suzanne Lawson, a very gifted facilitator with extensive experience at the national level of the Canadian church. Fr. Gregory has recently resigned as the Superior of OJN, and also as president of CAROA, in order to spend a six month time of work and reflection in Norwich.

The day began with Morning Prayer organized around small group lectio reflections on the daily Old Testament lessons for the week, from Exodus. This proved very fruitful. The meetings included function groups for superiors, for formation directors (my group) and for others. In the function groups we had time to share community and vocational issues on a deeper level. But most of the meetings were in whole group format. The discussions were quite frank, with time spent on the possibilities of cooperation in the care of elderly members, in helping declining communities in various ways, in the seemingly eternal topics of recruitment and helping the Anglican churches become better informed about the religious life. Suzanne Lawson did not let us get too diffuse about these and other topics, and had a firm hand in leading us away from pious generalities and toward actual people doing actual things. I ended up being the coordinator for formation directors for the coming year.

A highlight of our time together was a talk given by the Anglican Archbishop of Toronto, Colin Johnson. He has been an associate of SSJD for most of his ministry and understands pretty well what we do. He is delightfully informal, and had warm and helpful words for us. Another visitor one evening was OHC's Br. Reginald Crenshaw, now stationed at our priory in Toronto, who was very much a part of CAROA leadership conferences for many years and is deeply loved.

The time-off time was scheduled at the end of the conference, on Saturday afternoon, with the business finished, and we were tired and eager to return home. So after the business session on Saturday morning we piled back into the van and the four of us drive back the way we came. Well, almost. At Watertown we turned onto NY Highway 12 and drove south through a more rural area, quite lovely, rejoining the Thruway at Utica. I love the drive through the Mohawk Valley and it was wonderful to watch the trees leaf out more and more as we went further south.