I have much unpacking to do and I am not unaware of the sensitivities surrounding a lot of this stuff. I am wondering whether readership will be frustrated by my unwillingness to spill and my tendency to be careful. I think and I hope my motives come from the right place, in that I have dealt, in the early history of this blog, with that old fabric that is forever fraying and 'tearing.' I do not want to pull too much at the unravelling hem, when so many new lives are being stitched into the cloth, as is in evidence all around me as I witness incredible engagement in social justice issues from feeding programs to senior citizens programs and migrant farmworkers' health and educational care.
There are a lot of levels on which I am being challenged.
The following is now very subjective and 'gut,' so I am aware that it might lack roundedness and analysis:
- I have found it hard to be a charismatic here - there is lots of liturgy and attachment to the prayer book. It is more Anglican here than it is in my experience of English Anglicanism. I have found myself longing for the waiting on God that I found in training at Derby's St Alkmund's - that's my spiritual comfort zone but I know I need to seek God in all expressions, or rather allow him to reveal himself to me.
- Today we met with our first openly gay priest so I have much more thinking to do on that one. My thinking might become more nuanced even if it never fundamentally changes.
- I have a lot of work to do thinking through the emphases on social justice which seem uppermost above anything else, especially in New York city.
- I have also encountered a kind of clergy careerism which I know can be the church everywhere and should also, in witnessing it, aid my own maturation process, after all I can be so idealistic and even though I am deeply interested in and not naive about ecclesiastical politics, I do sometimes imagine that calling should be a kind of out-of -the-blue otherness rather than some kind of plan hatched in terms of church progression. I have not expressed that very well and do not intend to be judgmental - perhaps I need to learn that all callings look very different and God uses us all for many different purposes.
I have also found one spiritual home here in terms of a church 'All Angels' - the theologically conservative, politically and socially liberal church. I really want to develop a relationship with this church and I will blog about its current incumbent and his vision and the church's shape and character very soon.
Meanwhile we are in the countryside of New York - yes it has one, but it took us two hours to reach it. Tomorrow we attend the 15th anniversary of the consecration of Bishop Roskam and then we might sit around table the couple of days after that to discuss some of the tentative first conclusions we might be beginning to form from our experiences here - conclusions is too strong a word - this is indaba - but we will feel sharper about some things and possibly find ourselves re-orientating our thinking around others.
So much to think through, so much in flux but many of the core ideas that I have already developed about how I hope to live out and communicate the faith remaining unchanged but just different. Not ready to draw too many conclusions yet.
To come:
- How to do conservative and liberal in New York - where and how?
- 14 to 17 olds with vision and hope, imaginations full of confidence in a future that they can change.
- Where are the distinctives of the Christian faith in many of the social justice programs?
- Why the liturgy and the Anglo-Catholicism and do the expressions of waiting on God and prayer ministry as I know them, modern worship singing and healing and deliverance ministry feature in the Anglican church here or are these things to be found in other US denominations only?
- Just how much is it appropriate to blog about the Anglican Communion?
- I ask the dean of New York Cathedral about the Anglican Covenant and he gives an interesting answer.
Hope I get time to write up all those posts.
Goodbye for now from New York but country-side NY.
