Captain Yips Secret Journal

Anglican Gems - I

In a holy action the division between the divine source and the human stream cannot be felt, for then God's will for his creature and what the creature does are simply the same; the creature is most himself by expressing God.  In an unholy action the division cannot be felt either; for unholiness is a living lie, the self-stultification of the creature's spirit, an active will not to know the fountain of our origin.  How sin resists and alters omnipotence is a mystery which can never be understood.  It could only be understood in the act of sinning, if sin could understand itself.  And sin neither can nor deserves to understand itself; sin is the voluntary self-confusion and self-darkening of the intellect on the side which faces God.  God and our relation with God can only be known when our life is a self-drawing out of the fountain of life. - Austin Farrer, Lord I Believe

A Thousand Flowers Wither

A family that includes a member with a destructive personality, an addict, for example, goes through some common stages.  There are periods of turmoil as the destructive personality damages himself and those around him; their are efforts by some members of the family to halt the damage, to get the destructive personality to stop.  These efforts are often halting at first, partly because everyone loves that family member, partly because the depth of destructiveness isn't understood immediately.  You hope, you pray, that they'll reverse course.  You don't want to close communication, and you want to make sure they're welcome. 

Eventually, though, the family comes to a crisis. A confrontation may occur, noisy, violently emotional, always painful.  Sometimes the destructive personality turns back from the brink:  sometimes he careens over the edge.  Or sometimes the family refuses the confrontation, and is gradually sucked into the continuous drama, and everyone's lives are more and more dominated by the will and whim of the destructive one.  Sometimes the family manages to largely expel the destructive one, find a way to circumscribe the damage they do.

The current Primates' Communique may be seen as the date that the Anglican Communion formally became TEC's co-dependent and enabler, and drew back from the brink of confrontation with TEC.  The actual effect of the Communique (if any) will only be discernable with time. The sheer wackiness of paragraph 101 of the report of the "Windsor Continuation Group"

Any scheme developed would rely on an undertaking from the present partners to ACNA that they would not seek to recruit and expand their membership by means of proselytisation

is stunningly idiotic.  Families that shy from confrontation are buying into the destructive one's patterns and pathways of destruction.  And that, it may be, is what's happening here.  I grieve.

Woe

Appalling and brutal news.  All Amy's many friends are grieving and praying with her and her family now.

No Expectations

Been very busy:  probably back sporadically.

Don't count me among those who think that the Anglican Primates' Meeting should do something as unAnglican as actually doing something, especially something so dramatic as giving ACNA some sort of status, or reducing TEC's status.  I'd rather they didn't, thank you.  I would rather just enjoy Phillip "I know big words" Aspinall's daily gassy blather for what it is, and go about my business.

The Episcopal Church or whatever it calls itself these days is dead.  It hasn't toppled over into the dust yet, but dead it is.  Part of the Anglican Communion or not, it'll continue to shrink until it exists only as a small urban sect with scant representation in suburbs or country.  It will become ever more incoherent, and ever more unable to do more than echo whatever motivates media culture.  It's destined to become Chris Matthews on his knees.  TEC has chosen the way of nonsense, and the results are simple and inevitable.*

The real question is who will take the dead entity's place.  If ACNA wants to do this, it has work to do.  The proposed Constitution isn't very good, and there are internal stresses galore.  ACNA needs time to work on this stuff.  So long as Katherine the Litigator is around, ACNA has someone to unify against, and you couldn't have built a better source of unity deliberately. 

It'll take prayerful humility and generosity on the part of the various groups and factions in ACNA to work out these differences, but one sure way to aggravate all those differences is too much success right now.  So let's let Phil "Shut up and listen to your betters" Aspinall continue to smarm around, and let's have the Primates do what they do best:  issue a communique that everyone ignores.  Thus will progress be made.

*Am I saying that Chris Matthews doesn't make any sense?  Have you ever listened to the dude?  Downright embarrassing.