The General Convention of the Episcopal Church affects me in a similar way that our liturgy does. Both are at once a celebration of who we are, of our life and labor together, of shared ministry and mission; but they are also imaginative speculations as to what we might become, or perhaps more rightly said, what we are in truth becoming.
Our liturgy is an enacted dream, an intentional speculation of what our world is intended to be, prophetic utterance speaking the future into being. At General Convention we imagined how the world would be healed via the millennium development goals, by tearing down the wall between Israel and the West Bank, by advocating steps to environmental sustainability, by addressing global warming, demanding just wages and worker justice, by decrying racism. We left California dreaming of a world intended by our God as best we could discern it: a just world of mutuality and compassionate interdependence.
Our liturgy is the way from week to week we Episcopal Christians imagine, dream of God’s promised future. We recount who we are in the word of God. We remember that God acts among us, calling us forever into relationship. We remind ourselves that it is God’s intention to heal and clothe and feed and dignify. We gather at God’s table as equals who are all made in God’s image, reminding ourselves that life begins at table together. We are reminded that it is our common life that feeds us and empowers us for this future dream that trembles into being as we speak; and then we are sent into the world as waking dream acting as if it were true. Dreams are not fantasy, but artifacts from the future, grounded in profound reality. If we but look we will see evidence of their already becoming, taking root in our world and in our lives. The dawn is coming, perhaps sooner than we know, when we will awake and find our dream, which is God’s dream, to be true.
