...any club that will have me....

I am not the only Mennonite in this village — I just carry on as if it were so.

"Would you clowns quit following me? It's embarrassing!"

The village was established by Scottish settlers. The current population is a touch more varied than it was back in the day, but not that much more. Anyway, there are at least four other Mennonites in residence who have been here longer than I — and I've been here 20 years (i.e, I'm the “newcomer”).

Two I've not yet met, including a businessman from my old hometown. The other belongs to a Mennonite name I see every time I activate the Wifi on my cell-phone.

Then there's a woman from the Mennonite enclave west of Toronto (Kitchener-Waterloo). She married a French fellow and they moved here shortly before we did. Two of their kids shared classes with ours, so we have interacted often and quite pleasantly through the years.

The other Menno I've met is a few years older, retired. He and his Catholic wife live just outside of town. I've only ever met him while riding bicycle — I, ill-advisedly lycra-clad and hunkering over my mid-life investment, pedaling furiously; he approaching serenely from the other direction, perched on a sensible upright bike and exerting no more energy than is required to stay vertical. We exchange greetings and continue on our disparate trajectories.

I gather he attends Mass. The kids are grown and gone, but were raised Catholic. He and the wife continue. He is a participant — sings in the choir, reads scripture — but not a communicant. Thus far he has eschewed conversion.

I could almost envision following suit.

Perhaps it strains the argument, but I believe his modus is already my own — committed participation, drawing short of conversion.

My wife and I attend and contribute to the life of the local United Church — a congregation that has welcomed us and whom we love — but we are not members. We are permitted to take communion, though. If we brought our cats to church, I imagine they would be too.

The United Church of Canada fancies itself the most protestant of Protestant denominations. They've broken ground in all the expected religious-identity frontiers — women's ordination, gay marriage and the subsequent adoption of LGBTQ shibboleths, etc. Currently the UCC is (somehow) boycotting Israel and Big Oil. Oh, and there's also this matter of an atheist minister who gets to keep her post. Needless to say if the cause is capital-P Progressive odds are the UCC is fer it.

I won't get into theology — a field I regard with distrust if not distaste, unless I'm the one espousing it. I suppose I could cherry-pick which denominational policies I wholeheartedly endorse and which I regard with, at the very least, some ambivalence. But I have benefitted from giving every one of them my sober and compassionate consideration — much as I have benefited from devoting respectful attention to the Papal Encyclicals. In the end big organizations fail in surprisingly big ways. We hardly need itemize the RCC's substantial failures. But as with the distantly foundational Mother Church, the UCC — even in its current state of cascading collapse — remains a very big organization.

My disagreement with the UCC is a typically Mennonite one — in its formation the UCC adopted a Presbyterian model of authority. “Top down,” in other words. Catholics get their orders from Rome; the UCC gets theirs from Toronto. Many is the Sunday when I hear yet another headline-inspired sermon and, looking over the white-haired remnant of the congregation, wonder if Jesus' admonition of the Pharisees (the Progressives of his day) does not apply to the presbytery — “They bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on people's shoulders.”

I imagine my fellow bicycle-riding tribe-member is as ambivalent about the authority structure hosting his participation as I am with mine. I haven't asked, though. It's probably best we continue pretending we are ignorant of the dissident core smouldering in each other's inner life, and keep to our distinct directions on the road we share. A brief wave of wary acknowledgment is enough.

Endnote: Hey, if you've made it this far there's no need for me to apologize for getting all religious on you — in fact you're probably up for more! It's the Christian Humanists' fault — I found this informed riff off Charles Taylor strangely encouraging; while this interview pretty much embodies exactly what prevents me from seriously entertaining conversion to Catholicism.