A Comfortable Distance

Pierre Burton wrote “The Comfortable Pew,” an exploration of how comfortable mainstream Christianity had become in Canada. The joke at the time was that anyone who ever referred to an Anglican church pew as comfortable, never sat in one.

Perhaps some of Burton’s criticism was accurate, but now we turn our attention to a different kind of comfort—not a comfortable complacency or a well engineered chair. The question that haunts the places of worship across our country (and around the world) is: what’s a comfortable distance between worshippers of different households. How close are we willing to get to one another as emergency healthcare measures are eased and Covid-19 cases remain high?

This challenge is not helped by the fact that what’s “comfortable” for one person will not be the same for the person next to them, or near to them.

I doubt that, at this point, the Parish Council will be able to develop a policy that will be agreed to by everyone. All we can do, I think, is to come up with something that seems reasonable and satisfies the concerns of most people. Hopefully,  we will get to a point where the need for social distancing will no longer be such a major concern.

This will be one of the topics up for consideration at the Parish Council meeting on Tuesday. Currently, we are using the number 200 as our maximum for the space available in the church-building. 50% capacity is 100-people. But many of us have said that even then it will seem like a lot of people in a small space.

Part of the humour in the whole question is that there have not been many times in recent years when we’ve exceeded 100 people at any one time in the building. September, October, Christmas Eve and Easter are the times when we would normally expect to exceed 100 people in attendance. Much of the time capacity limits are a moot point.

Obviously,  we can continue to assign seats (or pews), thus utilizing our space in a way that allows for greater social distancing. And if there are times when someone is uncomfortable there is no shame in leaving the building. I know, that’s easier said than done.

Throughout it all and as we continue to navigate the easing of restrictions we need to be aware that the people around us may need more space and that’s okay!

An additional question regards the return to administering communion in both kinds, the bread and the wine, the body and the blood. The use of the individual communion cups will continue and we had hoped to begin this practice on March 20. However, we are delaying this, principally because of the need to retrain ourselves. It is not complicated but it does take some getting used to.

Patience is a virtue, they say, and a much needed quality as we navigate our way through this storm.