En Via

Find the Light

to my babies…

I wish upon you peace

I wish upon you grace

I wish for less of what you want

And more of what you need

I wish upon you an old life 

With a heart that stays young

But most of all I wish upon you love

I wish upon you truth

When all you feel is doubt

I hope you know that an open mind

Still knows when to shut things out

I wish upon you a brave heart

That will always rise above

But most of all I wish upon you love

As the sun sets the moon begins to rise

So even in the darkness you’ll find the light

You’ll find the light

You’ll find the light

Yes, even in the darkness you’ll find the light

I wish upon you an easy life

I wish upon you hard times

I hope you know that both joy and pain

Each need their moment to shine

I wish you ears that are quick to listen

That you’re slow to use that tongue

But most of all I wish upon you love

As the sun sets the moon begins to rise

So even in the darkness you’ll find the light

You’ll find the light

You’ll find the light

You’ll find the light

Yes, even in the darkness you’ll find the light

Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?

July 14, 2012 the New York Times published, Op-Ed Columnist Ross Douthat’s following article on the Episcopal Church in America. I think it’s worth sharing:

IN 1998, John Shelby Spong, then the reliably controversial Episcopal bishop of Newark, published a book entitled “Why Christianity Must Change or Die.” Spong was a uniquely radical figure — during his career, he dismissed almost every element of traditional Christian faith as so much superstition — but most recent leaders of the Episcopal Church have shared his premise. Thus their church has spent the last several decades changing and then changing some more, from a sedate pillar of the WASP establishment into one of the most self-consciously progressive Christian bodies in the United States.

As a result, today the Episcopal Church looks roughly how Roman Catholicism would look if Pope Benedict XVI suddenly adopted every reform ever urged on the Vatican by liberal pundits and theologians. It still has priests and bishops, altars and stained-glass windows. But it is flexible to the point of indifference on dogma, friendly to sexual liberation in almost every form, willing to blend Christianity with other faiths, and eager to downplay theology entirely in favor of secular political causes.

Yet instead of attracting a younger, more open-minded demographic with these changes, the Episcopal Church’s dying has proceeded apace. Last week, while the church’s House of Bishops was approving a rite to bless same-sex unions, Episcopalian church attendance figures for 2000-10 circulated in the religion blogosphere. They showed something between a decline and a collapse: In the last decade, average Sunday attendance dropped 23 percent, and not a single Episcopal diocese in the country saw churchgoing increase.

This decline is the latest chapter in a story dating to the 1960s. The trends unleashed in that era — not only the sexual revolution, but also consumerism and materialism, multiculturalism and relativism — threw all of American Christianity into crisis, and ushered in decades of debate over how to keep the nation’s churches relevant and vital.

Traditional believers, both Protestant and Catholic, have not necessarily thrived in this environment. The most successful Christian bodies have often been politically conservative but theologically shallow, preaching a gospel of health and wealth rather than the full New Testament message.

But if conservative Christianity has often been compromised, liberal Christianity has simply collapsed. Practically every denomination — Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian — that has tried to adapt itself to contemporary liberal values has seen an Episcopal-style plunge in church attendance. Within the Catholic Church, too, the most progressive-minded religious orders have often failed to generate the vocations necessary to sustain themselves.

Both religious and secular liberals have been loath to recognize this crisis. Leaders of liberal churches have alternated between a Monty Python-esque “it’s just a flesh wound!” bravado and a weird self-righteousness about their looming extinction. (In a 2006 interview, the Episcopal Church’s presiding bishop explained that her communion’s members valued “the stewardship of the earth” too highly to reproduce themselves.)

Liberal commentators, meanwhile, consistently hail these forms of Christianity as a model for the future without reckoning with their decline. Few of the outraged critiques of the Vatican’s investigation of progressive nuns mentioned the fact that Rome had intervened because otherwise the orders in question were likely to disappear in a generation. Fewer still noted the consequences of this eclipse: Because progressive Catholicism has failed to inspire a new generation of sisters, Catholic hospitals across the country are passing into the hands of more bottom-line-focused administrators, with inevitable consequences for how they serve the poor.

But if liberals need to come to terms with these failures, religious conservatives should not be smug about them. The defining idea of liberal Christianity — that faith should spur social reform as well as personal conversion — has been an immensely positive force in our national life. No one should wish for its extinction, or for a world where Christianity becomes the exclusive property of the political right.

What should be wished for, instead, is that liberal Christianity recovers a religious reason for its own existence. As the liberal Protestant scholar Gary Dorrien has pointed out, the Christianity that animated causes such as the Social Gospel and the civil rights movement was much more dogmatic than present-day liberal faith. Its leaders had a “deep grounding in Bible study, family devotions, personal prayer and worship.” They argued for progressive reform in the context of “a personal transcendent God … the divinity of Christ, the need of personal redemption and the importance of Christian missions.”

Today, by contrast, the leaders of the Episcopal Church and similar bodies often don’t seem to be offering anything you can’t already get from a purely secular liberalism. Which suggests that per haps they should pause, amid their frantic renovations, and consider not just what they would change about historic Christianity, but what they would defend and offer uncompromisingly to the world.

Absent such a reconsideration, their fate is nearly certain: they will change, and change, and die.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 15, 2012An earlier version of this article misstated the date of an interview with an Episcopal Church bishop. It was in 2006, not 2005.

You can find the original article here.

And we shall say “Hallelujah”

It’s hard to find the words to describe my thanks for our church and the gift that it has been to my soul, but with the changing of the seasons in the Church Calendar, I am given new gifts and a new appreciation—and at times, words that describe my feelings of gratitude. I do not count tonight as one of those moments of gifted wordiness, but it is rather, a night filled with the gift of sentimentality and jumbled thoughts. And in an attempt to document what I am experiencing this start of the Easter season, I am going to try to muster up the words.

We are moving and it is more real to me with every Sunday that passes. We will be leaving our church—that beloved place that has shown me a glimpse of Heaven. I don’t want to leave, but it is what is next for us. I am both excited for the next chapter and kicking and screaming as we write the last few pages of this one. A great paradox of emotions.

Tonight as I write this, I am home with my babies as my husband serves in the Easter Vigil at Incarnation. I’m sure it is lovely—I can only imagine the beauty and the offering that it is to God. And, oh! how I wish I were there. For 25+ years of my life I missed out on the gift of the liturgy and for the last 3 years I have experienced it in more beauty and richness than I could ever imagine. The pieces of the puzzle that were once missing from my faith have come together with finding the Anglican Church and my soul has been given a great gift. I cannot imagine celebrating Easter anymore without first having Lent and Holy Week. Perhaps, tonight I am extra sentimental because our move seems like the approaching of Lent. Yearly I find myself not wanting Lent to come after Advent, Christmas and Epiphany… but when Lent has past, I look back at the season as one of my most favorite of the year because of how God works on my soul. Perhaps, our upcoming move will be a sort of Lent for me. A dreaded (yet welcomed) season filled with all good things and at the end of it, Easter.

Tomorrow I will worship with the people of Incarnation with a loud Hallelujah and I will look for His coming again in glory with new anticipation. And—oh—how I cannot wait!

Time

…goes by so quickly these days. I find myself living in a balance of chaos and peace at every moment. A tension of sorts when I am counting down the hours to my children’s bed times.

But, I am aware of the precious gift of time during this season of caring for an infant. Time goes by both fast and slow. I blink and moments continue to be over.

Life and August are growing so fast and everyday is different than the day before. But, each day I learn something a little more about our Creator.

I’m learning to live in the chaotic and peaceful one moment at a time with a thankful heart.

O Magnum Mysterium