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    Liturgy and the Lord’s Supper: A Virgin Experience of Intimacy

    Reverence and expectation fill the sanctuary. I take a seat on a pew and trace the prominent grain of its oak with my forefinger. A candle fidgets nearby, flickering kerosene faintly from its flame. Sunlight prances through a stained-glass window that portrays a shepherd holding one sheep in his arms with another following afoot. “Hold me now,” I whisper. “I am that lamb. Tiny. Broken. Needy.” Woody notes from the pipe organ climax in a crescendo of crashing waves, kissing the shore of my sandy heart and carrying a week’s-worth of offensive images and words away in their undertow. I exhale. The minister steps forward to lead the congregation in…

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    A Fresh Desire for God

    I’ve attended church services weekly for thirty years, but I can count on one hand the number of times that I’ve cried during the service. Having been reared in a churchgoing, Christian family, Sunday morning worship had grown comfortable and predictable, like a morning bowl of bran flakes. I’d allowed my participation in the corporate worship of the Church body to become a blasé routine that did little to challenge, cultivate, or spiritually form me. But this particular Sunday was different. Both woefully ignorant of the practices and traditions of liturgical churches, Jason and I tentatively stepped across threshold of the local Anglican church to hear a guest speaker whose…