I was intrigued by his description of the Scottish Episcopal Church .. ‘that almost its sole raison d’etre has been to be a non-Catholic form of sacramental Christianity …. through thick and thin they did preserve that sacramental tradition in the face of a highly non-sacramental church.’ That’s interesting as a statement of what we are for – a sacramental counter-balance to the Kirk. But of course there are other things that we seem to be for – a liberal expression of Christianity … a marker of the identity of a distinct cultural group. The danger is, of course, that if we are mainly defined in adversarial/over-against terms, we may never manage to be a church with a mission to the whole of society expressed through a living tradition which we value.
Meanwhile back at Bogstead, we are dealing with an issue to do with our septic tanks. Like Tutankhamun’s tomb, they consist of a number of interlinked chambers which need to be emptied and filled in a particular sequence. Should anything go amiss with that ordered sequence, terrible problems result. Of which more tomorrow ..