Anglican-Orthodox dialogue in happier days

From the 1950s onwards, my father was a member of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius, founded during the 1920s to promote greater dialogue between the East and the West (at a time when Rome, the abortive history of the Malines conversations notwithstanding, largely eschewed ecumenical contact). Dominated in its early days by the larger-than-life Nicholas Zernov and his formidable wife Melitza, it hosted annual conferences that drew such speakers as Donald Allchin, Anthony Bloom, Lev Gillet, Kallistos Ware and Rowan Williams. The following is an undated fragment chronicling aspects of a conference clearly held in Durham, whose unknown author (almost certainly an Anglican) captures some of the spirit of the Fellowship in its heyday.

1. PRAISE MY SOUL THE KING OF HEAVEN
TO HIS FEET THE TRIBUTE BRING
Oh my gosh, it's half past seven -
How can I expect to sing?
Yawning, moaning,
Stretching, groaning,
Here the damned alarm clock ring.

2. LOAFERS IN YOUR SEATS ADORE HIM,
YE who SIT THERE FAST ASLEEP
Yes we know this talk would bore Him
And that question make him weep.
MAKING Speeches
FRAMED AS QUESTIONS
Voicing contemplations deep.

3. VOICES SO DISTINGUISHED MEET US,
KALLISTOS INTONING prayers,
Rowan's velvet Welsh tones greet us -
When he speaks we know he cares -
Canon Allchin's
Reading poems
And Elizabeth BRIERE'S

4. LITURGIES which run forever
Vespers drag on hour by hour
Standing always SITTING NEVER
Held up by the Spirit's power.
Evensong and
EARLY matins
In the shade of Durham tower.

5. DRINKING beer with Greeks and Romans
Every evening in the bar.
ALCOHOL IN OUR ABDOMENS
Helps to make our thinking shar-p
Thinking deeply
Drinking deeper
Theologians that we are.

A Missionary Bishop for Europe

Yesterday saw the consecration at Wheaton College in the United States of the Reverend Canon Andy Lines as Missionary Bishop for Europe, following the decision of the Scottish Episcopal Church to amend canon law on marriage to permit same-sex unions. A graduate of Durham (University College, 1982), Lines served in the British Army from 1983 to 1988. He was ordained for the South American Missionary Society in 1997 (at the age of 37), having worked as a missionary to Paraguay since 1991. He has been General Secretary of Crosslinks and chairman of the Anglican Mission in England.

Archbishop Foley Beach of the Anglican Church in North America had this to say:

After the American revolution, the new Anglican Church here - then called the Protestant Episcopal Church - could not get the establishment in England to provide a bishop.  It was the Scots who came to the rescue and consecrated Samuel Seabury in 1784 as the first American Bishop.  It is a privilege to now return the favor to those in Scotland who are crying out for oversight.

 

It will be interesting to see whether such a move will dramatically alter the prevailing dynamic within the Church of England. The statement of support from Bishop Rod Thomas of Maidstone, whose appointment was supposedly intended to reassure conservative Anglicans that the Church of England remained a broad tent, suggests that "border crossing" may be here to stay (and not in Scotland alone).

Under the Mercy

This evening Jennifer and I said Compline by my father's grave on the fourth anniversary of his death.

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.