after midnight mass:

went to midnight mass at st mary magdalenes, a high anglican church (ie 2 hour service, 12th century plain song, therminer, silver bells, and book of common prayer), with two new friends (andy and jamie). its been a couple of months since i have been to church, and my desire to do theology has increased, while my theism has decreased. or not strictly my theism, but something more complicated...i think the question i am working on answering, is how to live a life under the traditions of christianity, and the virtues of vhristianity, not only the aesthetics (though the aesthetics are vital to me), or the deep mysticisms of Her monastic traditions, or her history of social justice, but also such basic virtues as temperance, justice, mercy, grace, fortitude, or hope, esp when one for example reads thru the nicene cred, and thinks i do not belive any of this. i think maybe i am becoming more protestant, in the sin boldly/here i stand sense of the world, but where do i stand, and does sinning boldly include basic heresys?

(or to put it another way, one of the reasons i love the anglo-catholic tradition is that it allows for one to be both logocentric, and committed to the ambiguity of language, to allow for the full range of human emotions, and to realise that the narrative of the divine is never completed, that one can always attempt to seek god, fail at that attempt, and still live a life of fullness--and to live a life of fullness while using ones gifts and subjucating ones ego--the instability, and the stability, and the desire to live in parodox--but also not chaos, that the scripture, and the liturgy, and the saints, and the hymns, and the glosses on the glosses, all provide an undergirding, a pattern to mould not only ones years, but ones days, and ones hours--but that pattern is fractal and renewing/able...but there has to be a core, and if the core has left you, if the core does not resonate with you (the core here being the apostolic and nicene creeds) can one really be renewed in the blood of the lamb?