First, an update. While my readers are well aware that I have made my way out of the Anglican Catholic Church, I haven't mentioned where we ended up. Turns out that there was a little traditional Realignment parish of in our neck kof the woods I didn't know about until fairly recently. Well, long story short, we visited and immediately fell in love the with people there. The service is MOTR, and there are only a couple of "contemporary" flourishes thrown in (e.g., "Our God Is An Awesome God"). But for the most part it is a basic Anglican liturgy.
I don't know at this point if we'll return to the Continuum or stay in the Realignment. Praying for God's guidance on this. I consider myself more of a classical Anglican Continuer than anything else, but perhaps God is showing me something new. I take it a day at a time.
But last night I went back to Evening Prayer at St. Mary's. I did so because I had come to miss it, and the two gentlemen with whom I pray, one a postulant and the other an aspirant, missed me. It was good to see them again, and to pray there with them in St. Mary's beautiful little sanctuary:
I intend to pray Evening Prayer on Wednesdays as often as I can. For some reason, I can't give this up.
And it got me to thinking last night. When Kevin, Matt and I were there praying, we weren't two Anglo-Catholics and one Ango-Protestant. We were simply three brothers in Christ, praying the matchless prose of Cranmer's prayerbook. But it wasn't that prose which united us. It was simply the flame of prayer. The flame of the Holy Spirit.
I wondered last night if maybe Anglican unity, if it is to be achieved, will happen not because of the ecclesial machinations of bishops and other "movers and shakers", but because we all start recognizing Christ in the other. If lay people can reach across "party" boundaries to find fellowship with the other -- something not unknown in Anglican history -- maybe the bishops and the "movers and shakers" will follow.