“Easter is a journey.”  This welcome reminder was central to an Easter message from Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.  In a literal sense, it reminds us that Easter is a whole season, not just a single day.  Eastertide, or the Easter season, lasts until Pentecost, which this year falls on May 31.  That gives Christians 50 days to celebrate the Resurrection in a particular and intentional way.  But one might ask, if we’re supposed to celebrate the Resurrection every Sunday, as we are, what need is there for an Easter season?

I think of it this way.  Resurrection, like conversion, is a process as much as a destination.  New life often comes in a form that we don’t recognize, such as an encounter with a person we don’t much like, or having to take a job that we don’t think suits our talents very well, or moving to a new place…

A friend of mine sent me a link to an article about the Archbishop of Canterbury, with the assurance that it is not a story from the satirical news source The Onion.  The headline reads: “Archbishop calls for more praying in churches.”

I had to laugh, and to give thanks to God yet again for the good (reverend) doctor.  More than just about any contemporary theologian I can think of, Rowan Williams understands what it is that ails Christianity today.  Better yet, he understands that the cure is nothing new, nothing fancy, nothing that costs money.  The cure is the tradition itself: prayer, study, worship.  The cure is to focus on our own spiritual health, and as part of that focus to start engaging in the disciplines our faith requires, disciplines that inevitably lead us to seeing the face of God in our neighbor.

It’s simple stuff, but simple stuff that is…

When this blog began several weeks ago, many of the contributors made reference to the Pew research study that reported that “more than one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion - or no religion at all.” I’m not sure if any of the other contributors to this blog count themselves in that 28 percent, but I do.

And maybe it is because I made the leap from one denomination to another that I feel so moved to explain what I love about my church. (Converts are notoriously obnoxious about this stuff!) In my last post I promised to discuss more about my own personal sense of Anglican identity, so here goes.

I am an Episcopalian by personal choice and through the grace of God. My family of origin, as well as my husband’s family, are all Roman Catholic; I can’t emphasize enough the…