Introductory post

The Collect of the Day from today's Morning Prayer (Common Worship) runs thus:

Lord of all,
who gave to your servants Cyril and Methodius
the gift of tongues to proclaim the gospel to the Slavs:
make your whole Church one as you are one
that all Christians may honour one another,
and east and west acknowledge
one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
and you, the God and Father of all;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Emphasis mine. Would that the various Primates might take this to heart.

Perhaps the start of the General Synod wasn't an ideal time to start reading various Christian blogs, many of them Anglican. I have to start somewhere, though. And the calls to unity and compassion that I've seen in the online community make a wonderful counterbalance to what I might think if I relied on more traditional media reports.

A bit about me, and this blog, and what it's for:

I'm a Canadian, living in London for some years now. I was raised in a Christian (United Church of Canada) household, left Christianity for doctrinal reasons, seriously considered Judaism but realised I had some of the same objections. I have a strong belief in God and feel drawn to corporate worship and structured private prayer, but have difficulty finding communities where I can find a sense of fellowship without tripping over intellectual problems.

I was baptized and confirmed, but I do not currently consider myself Christian. I have major intellectual objections to the Trinity and the Incarnation. Nevertheless, in recent months I've felt drawn toward Christianity. My ideas for further spiritual study tend strongly toward Christianity, and toward taking the bits of it that I do understand or relate to on some level and expanding or augmenting them. Finding common ground and adding to it, basically.

I attend Christian services when I can (and more Christian services than any other sort), but I will not receive the Eucharist or say the Apostles' Creed at this point in my journey: it would feel dishonest.

My private prayer is more regular. At the moment I pray Morning Prayer (Common Worship) every morning. I sing the Psalms and sometimes the various canticles (more on this in a later post) and read everything else in an undertone. I skip over bits I really can't believe; I figure if God is merciful, where I am is okay, and if God is not merciful I'm screwed anyway.

I'm quite in agreement with what Jesus said regarding the Summary of the Law. I'd like to work that into my structured daily prayer, more, but I'm not sure where it fits.

My unstructured prayer varies more, from lengthy diatribes to the very simple internal "Help!" or "Thanks!" in response to a challenge or a gift.

One of the things I've noticed is that when I sing liturgical material rather than just saying it, something changes internally. I'm able to sing about the Trinity and believe it, in some sense; a said doxology bothers me but a sung one is actually a comfort. I've even sung settings of the Nicene Creed and been able to believe them while I'm singing... the belief disappears, or becomes somehow less accessible, when I stop. I don't know how this works, but I want to explore it more: where in the continuum of speech to chant to song does this change? Do I experience it only with Christian texts, or do other traditions also have material with this ability to get past the logical radar as soon as I start singing? What about material that I find actively repulsive rather than just incomprehensible? Will singing enable me to relate to it in a different context? I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I think singing is always going to be an important part of my spiritual life, so it seemed sensible to involve it in the blog name.

That's enough for now, I think.