Finding God

Each morning when I open up my Google News page, I see a daily culling of stories from the media that involve the Episcopal Church in one way or another. These stories typically fall into two piles. First, there are stories that show the church in action. These include things like a church in Boston holding a prayer service to bring calm to a gang-ridden neighborhood; a group in Minneapolis translating the Prayer Book into Hmong; a mission trip; a refugee settlement; or a group of cyclists raising money for a water project in the Sudan.

The other pile contains things like who has sued whom, what this court said about who owns which church’s property, and--perhaps most strangely--where and when the P.B. can wear her hat. The writers of this stuff usually take strong, polar positions on what, at least to them, are issues central to the faith. In a recent post on her blog, Diana Butler Bass has interesting things to say about this lot. You can read it here.

If you want to learn what the Episcopal Church is all about, I beseech you not to try to find out by reading about it. Instead, take a month and visit a different Episcopal Church in your area each Sunday. I suspect that each of the four will be different. You’ll probably like one better than the others. But if you take a look at each of them, you’ll find Christ present in what’s going on there. It won’t be earth-shaking; it won’t change the world. But it will be real, it will be relevant, and it will be helping to build God’s kingdom on earth. Those are the folks to whom I’ll tip my hat.