Richard Kew has posted yet another thoughtful piece on where we are as Province and as a Communion. (I actually find his message to be one of the most hopeful ones I’ve read this week.)

“In all the harrumphing and posturing that is going on I see a polarization set up that promises little more than mutually assured destruction. Some of the mentors of my youth were men who fought on the Western Front in 1914-1918 — one of the most willful acts of inane warfare that humankind has ever perpetrated. It was appalling that gaining real estate that was measured in yards rather than miles was used to justify the inhuman slaughter of tens of thousands in a single action. Not only was the war inconclusive, but there was a rematch of this ‘war to end all wars’ less than a quarter of a century later. Clearly, polarized battling is seldom the answer to intractible human problems.

This morning I read a letter in The Living Church by Don Stivers, my predecessor in one of my former parishes. Don asks whether ‘the Holy Spirit may be guiding the Church int a deeper spirituality of love for one another often obscured in older models of the Church that demand uniformity by exclusion.’ I do not know whether he is right, but I would suggest that the Holy Spirit ought not to be left out of the anguish we are passing through, and that perhaps we are tending to talk too much about the Spirit without necessarily having listened carefully for his voice.”

In a similar vein Tony Clavier also calls on all of us to be quiet for a while. He invites, nay, urges us to seek an interior silence that will let the Spirit’s voice actually be heard – instead of claimed.

“Rather like prayer, taking time to reflect, to do theology, to examine our roots, to invoke Jesus who died for all, is a disciplined activity. Prayer is so hard. It seems so impractical when we want to get on with it. But without self-examination, repentance, thanksgiving, magnifying, loving, we cannot be that which we have been called to be for God and the world. It is time for our church to shut up for a season and engage in self-examination in the light of the Gospel and the Catholic Church.”

Read the rest of Richard Kew’s post here: Post-Convention Meanderings

Read Tony Clavier’s piece here: It’s Time To Be Quiet.