The little church on the Yarra is dressed for Lent. There are three parishioners, the locum and me. The vicar's gone. Years ago, he arrived from Sydney, with tambourines and a direct line to God. The old-timers bolted, the vestry emptied, the bills piled up, and now the diocese is talking foreclosure, the waiving of debts and disbandment.
I sit in the back pew, in gumleafed sunlight. Iris Murdoch shuffles up. 'I nearly became a Buddhist,' she whispers to Phyllis James, sitting next to her, 'but then said to myself, "Don't be foolish, Iris. You're a member of the Church of England."'
Philip Larkin, further down the pew, guffaws, and then falls silent, perhaps contemplating the fate of churches when they fall completely out of use. That must be one of his 'dubious women' beside him. It's either her or Archbishop Carey's 'toothless crone' taking the last spot.
'Won't you come forward?'
I start out of my reverie, but no, it's not Billy Graham, after my soul. It's the kindly locum, hands folded over surplice. To my polite but distant 'No, thank you', he then bellows, 'Spoken like a true Anglican!'
So, a dishevelled crew of the living and the dead, we stand and join the current faithful, declaring we are joyful in God's word, have our eyes fixed on Christ and are ready to run the race set before us. We listen to Samuel, Paul and John and read a sad travesty of Psalm 23.
That evening, I fly home to Sydney.
We moved up here in the early '90s, and the local congregation soon had my number. Only Anglicans from Down South bow their heads in the Creed, kneel in prayer and 'amen' in extraordinary places.
'It all started with Samuel Marsden', cautions a friend, 'the flogging parson'.
A stint at a private school, teaching English and Religious Studies, further enlightens me as I dodge The Crusaders, stare disbelievingly at the vicar and bypass the Mothers' Prayer Group. But in the end, it is Sydney's Archbishop and Dean, the Jensen brothers, who tell me where I'm truly at, as they overturn the church furniture, drive out the miscreants and boycott the Lambeth Conference, that beleaguered supporter of women priests, and bishops belonging to 'the other team'.
My brother and I grew up in Auckland, in the sectarian '50s. The only other teams we knew were denominational ones. If you married 'out ', then, like Flanders and Swann's ill-fated couple, the honeysuckle and bindweed, you might pull up your roots 'and just shrivel away'.
To avoid such a fate, our family strode a middle Anglican path, although one godfather, fleeing his third wife, headed off to Kuwait before my christening and sent back a bible with 'There hath no temptation taken you, but such is as common to man ...' inscribed on the flyleaf.
The Catechism, having none of that, ensured we renounced the devil and all his works, and when the Bishop lifted his hand from our heads, the Church of England girls school took over. For seven years we sat cross-legged under 'The Blood of the Martyrs is the Seed of the Church', and the dusty Melanesian spears and faded shields bore witness.
Mission boxes sat on our mantelpieces at Lent, and the missionaries repaid our efforts with slide shows, in which Mother Hubbard dresses meandered eternally towards a little church on a green hill, just above the encroaching jungle. Back home, we were armed for the Wicked World with copies of The Screwtape Letters and Honest to God, while my brother, who was six years older and had escaped all this, waltzed and quickstepped in church halls, with girls who wore orchids and batted their eyelids. 'Definitely No Rock 'n' Roll' was chalked up on blackboards outside.
Then, in 1958, Billy Graham barrelled down on our innocent islands and broke the spell. He asked my brother to come forward, and my brother did. He saw the true light, and embarked on the Wanganella for Sydney and Moore College. We farewelled him, clutching paper streamers till they snapped. 'Now is the Hour,' we cried with the seagulls, 'for us to say goodbye. Soon you'll be sailing,' we sobbed, 'far across the sea'.
But Sin City ensnared my brother before he could reach Moore College and it was the Jensen brothers who seized the baton and ran the race as Billy Graham saw fit.
So neither lapsed nor nominal, but wandering — squizzing through church doors to check the whereabouts of altar, cross and candlesticks, before slipping into the back row, beside dubious women, toothless crones, and the ghost of Iris Murdoch.
Last up to Communion, first out the door.
A True Anglican.
Eleanor Massey is a long time English teacher who now works casually in NSW schools. She is a freelance writer, with a number of published articles in such magazines as The Big Issue, Good Reading and Wet Ink.