This essay by Theo Hobson was in my morning trawl (thank you nod to Maggie Dawn – who has been picking the really interesting stuff of late). Hobson visits a Anglican . . . non-worship, worship service in West London and shares the experience.

Throughout his description of the art instalations, the impromptu feel, the artsy free form nature of it all, while talking about how some people are not comfortable with “organised” religion – that is the structured liturgical forms, and familiar settings of churches – I could not help but reflect on how it all began.

Take a eucharistic prayer for example – now it is the norm that (in western liturgical churches) the priest reads one from a fixed set of options. The choice may vary depending on the season, local custom, or personal preference but the words are the same every time – the prayer has become homogenised. Believe it or not this was not always so. Indeed this one prayer (as an example) was for at least three hundred years a free form on the spot prayer by the bishop (the normal celebrant for the period).

There is something – safe, possibly even comfortable, about the “norm” a standard format, a memorable set of words, an expected environment. However, there is something to be said for the edgy, the awkward, the un-expected because our experience of, and growth in our faith, and our OC/IC identity is punctuated with the unexpected, the awkward, those moments that interrupt the flow and make us pay attention.

Finally – it is, as I have often observed here – too often the case that we indie folk spend too much effort and energy trying to look like “the norm” – rather than being true to our quirky, edgy, experimental selves.