The tide turns...

Sorry about the absence folks; for the last 10 days I’ve been marinating in my own mucus with a cold and flu of such virulence I’m convinced it was developed in a laboratory somewhere by a team of ‘reasserters’ with the specific intention of making life miserable for people like me. Ok, so maybe that’s an exaggeration, but it’s no less whacky than some of the stuff that’s been recently flying around the world. “Churches within the Church”, and the Sydney leadership urging North Americans to leave their national church and form a new diocese – even though those pushing them into this idiotic move are on record as saying they won’t do it themselves because they don’t want to lose their impressive property portfolio.

The more I think about all this, the more I wonder if Anglicanism has plunged into some modernist production of King Lear - the kings have become fools, and our only hope of finding leadership and wisdom remains with the fools and jesters. Perhaps the metaphor isn’t so strange; after all, the incarnation - that outrageous point in time and history when God became human – occurred in the face of a human claiming to be God: and by the standards of even our time the Roman Emperor made a pretty convincing job of his charade. But we all know how it ended for him.

Which is why, despite a hacking cough and radioactive yellow slime oozing from my respiratory system (hey: why should my wife, kids & dogs be the only ones having to put up with my moaning ;-), I’ve never been more optimistic about the sad old diocese of Sydney and her future. Sure, our Archbishop’s acolytes see him poised on the brink of giving them a global influence of a magnitude they’ve only previously dared fantasise in their puritanical wet-dreams, but at the end of the day all that’s happening is that a fish from a very small and provincial pond is trying his luck at swimming in the ocean…

… and little fish - even if quite big in their own rockpool - invariably get eaten when their transition to the sea is guided more by hubris than wisdom. Especially if the God of Justice and Love is turning the tide in the opposite direction. I’ve never been much good at predicting the future, but this time the stagnant water that’s been choking so many of us has never looked so close to being flushed away.

I can hear the ‘important’ and ‘powerful’ of the diocese laughing already, but this ne-‘er-do-well has never forgotten Jesus’ crazy notions about seeing God through a child’s eyes. So what’s the bet that this time the powerless might fly further than anyone had dared imagine?