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Posts Tagged "John Lee":

Creation or Evolution?: Colin Coward

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Spring is in the air in the Church of England. Although we sometimes wonder if we are imagining it, there are enough signs in different quarters that ‘Aslan is on the move’ for us to dare to hope that we are not.

This is the first half of a blog post written by the Revd Colin Coward on Changing Attitude this morning, which I am reblogging on Lay Anglicana as it is important that it should reach as wide an audience as possible. I urge you to visit the site to read the rest of it.
Colin Coward, April 19th, 2013

I woke feeling excited this morning. I sat at 06.15 gazing through my east-facing window at a sensational sunrise, the sky ripped open to reveal azure blue through the ruptured clouds, as I ate muesli and drank leaf Darjeeling tea.

The sunrise enhanced my excitement. I know from the various conversations I had yesterday, with members of the LGB&T Anglican Coalition, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Jo Bailey Wells, the Archbishop’s chaplain, David Porter, the Director of Reconciliation, briefly with John Lee, Canon Phil Groves and David Chillingworth, Primus of Scotland, even more briefly on a bus with Chris Smith, and at length with Andrew Goddard, that things are in flux at the moment. There is movement and potential. Change is in the air.

In certain directions, things may look bad – the Men and Women in Marriage report. In other directions, things are moving, conversations are happening, representations are being made. Behind the scenes, in private conversations, far more is happening than breaks the surface into news media. Events (dear boy) will continue to destabilise those who fantasise about being in control of the process of dealing with LGB&T people in the Church and cause ruptures in the most carefully prepared and managed plans. Evolution, in short, continues.

Having been transfixed by the sunrise I lowered my eyes to Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man. I’ve reached page 213, and suddenly, de Chardin’s narrative, which I had found rather plodding to that point erupted into visionary excitement.

I worry a lot, and so do the people who comment on Twitter, Facebook and the Changing Attitude web site, as to whether the Church ‘gets it’. Whether the Church even remotely understands my experience and the experience of LGB&T people lay and ordained, who are often at their wits end in reading about and dealing with their experience of Church. Teilhard de Chardin convinced me once again to stop worrying – the Church WILL get it. Of course it will, there’s no escaping the evolutionary processes of God.

And I am blessed, I live and work and move among people who ‘get it’, often at a profound level – people living into the new paradigm, new, passionate visions of God.

Writes de Chardin in 1948:…. [read more here]

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