Can I suggest you head over to Akma’s blog to read his post about the death of Aaron Swartz. It is moving and thoughtful and expresses more eloquently than I can how I feel about this death.
Most people won’t know Aaron’s name. However we all get the benefit of his work.
As Akma says, “the churches have an intrinsic interest in communication, free communication, profligate communication.”
Hear, hear.
I wonder if the church has thought sufficiently about making it possible for someone who is in a 9-5 job and perhaps is out of town on weekends to attend church? Should early evening weekday services, or early morning ones not be more in evidence?
There are churches which have early morning services – if I’m honest I know of none that is terribly well patronised by people who are heading out of town for the weekend.
The question has certainly come up before as to whether it would be possible to establish a regular congregation in a city like Glasgow which met for a main weekly service at a time different to Sunday morning. (There are one or two services like this in the City of London, I think).
St Mary’s tried for a time to use the 5-7 pm weeknight slot for events and services. This had been dropping off before I came here and it was hard to see a way forward for those slots. Good things came out of the experiment but it is interesting that the ones which continued and took on on a life of their own were not liturgical. The poetry group, for example, came from this time.
I’m aware of a city centre church in Edinburgh which has just started to have a Saturday vigil mass like many Roman Catholic churches have. That doesn’t answer the question about people going out of town for the weekend but it is interesting that they are experimenting with that at the current time.
I do recall a church adjacent to a large factory that managed to hold a lunchtime communion service on a weekday. Only really works if everyone takes their lunch break, and has it at the same time, of course.
On the wider point there are those of us who would be regular attenders at Episcopalian services were it logistically feasible. I would certainly consider myself an Episcopalian even though it would take a 28 hour round trip to enable me to attend on a Sunday. I can’t imagine there are more than a few dozen folk in that situation nationwide, of course.
Thanks Jo – I’m aware of a number of people who regard themselves as members of St Mary’s who can’t physically get here for reasons of geography. I’ve been trying to think through what might be done to make such links stronger for a while.
The day begins with the discovery that someone (a member of the Orthodox church community who use the church sometimes) left a box of candles on a heater yesterday. The mess and stench greet me when I go into church at 0730 to get ready for the early service.
There was an outbreak of chiasmus in the Scottish Parliament yesterday, with this comment coming from David McLetchie: “Wouldn't it be ironic if … the criminals can be smokers but the smokers will become criminals?”Very clever. Of such stuff preachers are made and preachers make stuff of.
That last blog entry about the Election is an example of an apophatic blog entry. Not many of them about in the blogsphere.
I'd just like you to note how good I am being at not blogging anything about the Episcopal Election in this diocese.Lead us not into temptation.
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