Categories: uncategorized
Date: 14 October 2007 23:17:06
This is the second in my series of colour-themed entries, and I was expecting it to be called 'Green' seeing as that's where we are at the moment. But this morning was a special occasion, so I've had to change the title accordingly. If you're from the upper segment of the Anglican candle, or you spend too much time in Ecclesiantics, you'll probably have figured out by now that this is a church-y post.
It's a year now since Spike and I found ourselves rapidly leaving our old church, and looking for a new one. As we discussed possibilities, he suggested St John's, as it was fairly near us as we'd moved further out into Norwood, and a friend of ours was attending and giving favourable reviews. So we visited. And Spike was hooked. I was impressed, but it took me a couple of weeks to see that Resistance Was Futile, and a few more weeks to see that actually I didn't want to resist anyway. Spike being a Reader, and me being an ordinary pew-pleb, I was resigned to being somewhere that was closer to his Anglo-Catholic preference than to my post-evangelical middle-of-the-road one. What I found, what I wasn't really expecting, was an Anglo-Catholic church with a charismatic (in both senses of the word) Vicar, who while not always agreeing with evangelicals didn't speak slightingly of them. I found somewhere I feel at home. Somewhere I can be me. And somewhere where I could pluck up the courage to join the Sunday-School rota.
This morning was a Confirmation service, hence the colour change, as the Vicar wore a white stole, and the Scouse Bish was resplendent in a red and gold cope and mitre. He preached a fine sermon on the story of the Ten Lepers, about Jesus doing the unexpected and upsetting the establishment applecart with His outrageous free grace. He contrasted this with the 'Blow-Dry Jesus' of Victorian religious art, to the amusement of one of the confirmands, our neighbour and cat-sitter E, whose baptism I also attended a couple of weeks ago. She apparently used to be a fully paid-up Secular Humanist, but was interested in comparative religion and wanted to go to a church just to observe and learn how it operated. Her music teacher was a member of our congregation and told her about St John's, and the rest is :-D history.
Like I said, a special occasion.