handwringing

I surprise myself at how I can worry about something, while have an uncanny ability to not worry about lots of things that should at least make me a bit nervous.

Lately, as perhaps reflected in this blog, I've been worrying about the Episcopal Church USA, and the dramatic battles that appear to be taking place, within the ECUSA and the wider Anglican Communion, a struggle that at least in my mind, appears to have the inevitability of the American Civil War or Europe's World War I.

Maybe these current struggles are not a war, but it has the feel of competing sides, strategies, lines crossed, territory occupied, threats of future retaliation.

As someone who grew up Southern Baptist but who joined the ECUSA as a young adult, I worry about our church that I love and appreciate, a place where because lines haven't been drawn so closely folk could worship together even if they didn't always agree or think alike on a number of issues, but who found community in working out our faith together, in liturgy and worship. Having grown up in a system where one could easily learn everything one needed to know about God, worship and faith, reciting any aspect of it back at the drop of a hat, I appreciated a church where one lived with some ambiguity.

Since the vote at General Convention affirming the election of Gene Robinson as bishop in New Hampshire, the people who are mad at the ECUSA have been speaking long and loud, at General Convention, at the meeting in Dallas, after the primates gathering in London, and after Bishop Robinson's consecration last Sunday.

But are there other discussions? Voices?

Understandably, our bishops, outside of pastoral letters, are gingerly walking through this time of troubles in some silence. If there is an Episcopalian stereotype, for me it is the nervousness to call much attention to that which is unsettling.

And then I worry about each of the arguments being bandied about. Do I take them seriously? Should I? What am I missing? What am I overlooking because of my own biases and experiences?

AKMA has some reactions after the Diocese of Chicago's annual convention, and I found them encouraging, particularly his linking to a Dominican brother's sermon at Yale in the 1990s on the topic of a university community's ideal of seeking the truth. There are similarities to those of us in the church, laity and clergy, students and non-students, who are wrestling with these issues, as well as other issues that are less controversial, but essential to our lives and faith.