What would you take with you?

I wrote a little about changes in the church, here, a while ago.

There's a wonderful conversation going on over at Leave It Lay, all about what the church is and should be and where it is going. Great stuff! And in the comments there, people have started talking about a journey, and what trappings of 'church' as it is now they would take with them on that journey.

I don't consider myself part of the small-c church, the church as humans see it, because I don't say the Apostles' Creed and I don't take communion. I don't know whether I'm part of the Church as God sees it; I leave that judgement to the only One who can judge these things.

All the same, here's what I would take with me:

I would take the best of the church-run homeless shelters, the ones that don't try to dish up doctrine with dinner but just focus on making sure those who need it have a place to sleep and a meal. I would take the interest-free community loans that can sometimes stop people becoming homeless in the first place. I would take the coffee mornings, the visiting schemes, the support groups. I would take all of these examples of the church unconditionally loving and endlessly serving the wider world.

If I had lots of space I would take the Daily Office, which seems to be necessary for some people... it's certainly a part of my life in ways I hadn't imagined. I'd take Choral Evensong, I'd take every sort of sung psalmody I can find. I'd pack some Eucharistic services, because although I myself don't partake (more out of respect for a human institution than anything else, at this point) I recognise that that is, for most of you, important, far more important than the words and music are.

But I think that the Church exists to spread the Gospel, I think the Church and people in the Church spread the Gospel by living it, and I think all the trappings of liturgy and ritual and prayer and what we call sacrament--the candles and canticles, the incense and the oil, the bread and the wine--exist to enable us to live it better, and to respond to it with praise. And if the Gospel, if the news we have to spread, is that God loves us, the only way to live that is to rejoice in loving one another. I'd pack anything that helps us do that, and I'd jettison anything that acts as a barrier.

Maybe that's simplistic, but it's absolutely fundamental to my approach to this faith or any other. Why yes, I am a big old hippie.

If I didn't have room for much, I'd take the Summary of Law (to remind me what to do) and the Lord's Prayer (to help me be able to do it) and start again from those.