Wasteland Wednesday

April is the cruellest month (T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland) not so much because lilacs begin to bud, nor because Easter signals our rebirth (yes, sometimes that happens in March, it's poetic license) and we fall back to the same sins we seek redemption for; but rather because we find it a time of new beginnings. A time to cast off the old and move to the new.

Some of our members now contemplate leaving if "progress" however they define it has not happened by Easter. That raises a question for me. Do we trust God? Do we think that He has a plan for us? Do we think that we can with brute force and threats single-handedly move His church forward?

The really heartbreaking part is that several of us do seem to hold the opinion that we can do so. I am not at all certain that those who have left will return if we make "progress". In fact, I'm fairly certain that they will not as they recognize that TEC as a whole is the issue for them. It isn't the local congregation. It's the governing body that has departed their understanding and makes it increasingly clear that there is no place for them-- unless they are willing to simply pray, pay and obey. A criticism leveled often enough against the Catholic church with respect to it's members can also been to apply to TEC today.


So... how long til we make progress happen? And will progress mean regressing, that is to say... giving the building back to the diocese and looking for a place to hold an Anglo-Catholic rite once in a while? It might.