Just to reassure...

This blog is not quite dead, sir. I'm not throwing it on the cart just yet.

I did have quite a few weeks of inactivity on account of being in upstate New York on family business and generally trying to get ready for grad school. Sadly haven't made much progress at all on my reading list, though I have gotten electricity and rent and insurance sorted out for my move to Pittsburgh - now all I have left is packing, a task at which I am (I believe understandably) baulking. (The sole criterion would seem to be, what can be fit in the back of the truck?)

Quite a bit happened while I was out, it would seem. On the 12th, the Church of England passed legislation which will clear the way for women to be consecrated as bishops. My initial reaction is that this is very much a step in the right direction for the Church, even though it still has some ways to go (the Parliament having to approve the legislation first, before any women are permitted to be consecrated). I pray that the Mother Church will not suffer further division and loss because of this legislation, though it naturally depends upon the wills of those who opposed the measure, whether or not they will remain faithful to the Church.

Also, one of my old Anabaptist friends from Madison linked me to a story wherein Archbishop Williams delivered an address to the Lutheran World Federation Assembly, which was convening to address, apologise and seek forgiveness for the deadly wrongs which had been done by Lutherans and by other magisterial Reformed groups to the Anabaptists during and after the Reformation. He proceeded to highlight two concerns, both of which are very close to me on an intellectual level: the dark side of the legacy of European colonialism and religious proselytisation in East Asia, and the dark side of the historic mistreatment of Anabaptists by the churches in the Magisterial Reformation. He very astutely articulates, through the imagery of the Holy Eucharist, what we need to comprehend in how we offer ourselves and our wrongs for forgiveness by those by whom we have done wrong. It isn't simply an act of meaningless collective guilt or score-settling, but rather a way of realistically approaching our shared history so that we may learn how to better approach the social and theological problems which we approached wrongly in the first place. It's an address well worth reading; it may be found here.

I think I'll go for a walk now...