Hartshorn's question about regular attendance at St. A's is most interesting as I'd frankly never given the matter much thought before. I suppose regular church attendance reflects one's journey and might best be viewed as a snapshot extracted from a longer period of time−continuing for a while, stopping on occasion and perhaps starting again when conditions warrant. Maybe a change in attendance (up or down) signals a shift in priorities serving a greater purpose -- at least in some cases. Having given the matter a little thought I can identify several reasons, namely opportunity, relationship, community and habit that probably explain my regular attendance at Saint A's during the past decade or so.

Opportunity: With children grown I have the "luxury" of attending services because few pressures pull in other directions. Neither of my two daughters regularly attended church when living at home nor did I. We all reasoned that, as kids who attended Lutheran middle school, Catholic high school and (for the oldest) a Jesuit college, they'd paid their dues during the week leaving no reason for overkill and otherwise ruining a perfectly good Sunday morning. After a six-day stint of non-stop parenting, interwoven with the blessing of regular work requiring long hours, I was glad to take Sunday off. For parents in similar situations, I totally get it!

Relationship: Somewhere along the journey God evolved from a mental concept and fleeting feeling into a tangible presence and reality. When fortunate, I sense God's presence in all things and all places and move within a medium that makes no distinction between secular and sacred. Our worship service is a reminder of how our ancestors in faith struggled to deepen their understanding of God−with all the challenges, paradoxes and difficulties which that entails. Hartshorn's sermons portray the world through the eyes of our first century "ancestors-in-faith" and I can imagine what I suppose they actually thought and wrestled with in their own quest to know God. That puts me in their camp−listening to God as best I can, drawing half-baked conclusions about what God is actually saying (as I believe our ancestors sometimes did) and passing along my own imperfect impressions to anyone who cares to listen and not at all concerned or bothered by those who don't.

Community: I don't think of St. A's primarily in terms of our worship service although that's the most routine part of my association with the church. I think, instead, of the parish as a community that focuses on building a closer relationship with God in a variety of ways−with our worship service, important as it is, being just one such way. Other ways include our Lenten series, Advent series, men's group dinners, men's group retreats, youth ministry, adult learning classes, healing ministry, centering prayer, labyrinth walks, Corazon – things that constitute St. A's greater "footprint" in the real world. These other ways of being in community prevent the Sunday worship experience from becoming an isolated event that's somehow not connected with life where the rubber meets the road. These other ways provide the chance to learn how others experience God; the miracles bestowed; the healing granted; the close call avoided; what makes sense and what doesn't. I suppose for me it's in greater community that Sunday worship makes sense−that opportunity for reflection outside one's own head. Indeed, were it not for the opportunities offered by involvement in the greater parish community I might slowly slip into a more erratic attendance−perhaps drifting away altogether in due time. And that would be logical because I certainly can't figure it out by myself so I would eventually stop growing and probably become cynical and then it would be time to go away and sulk.

Habit: Finally, I think good old fashioned habit has a lot to do with things in general and church attendance in particular, at least for me. Habit has its own inertia and I'm cautious about letting other things slip into a routine that now includes Sunday worship. I never feel like I'm firmly in the saddle when it comes to God and prayer because I know how habit and change-of-habit affects my prayer life. I'm not one who's uniformly diligent about these things. So, I see no reason why my regular attendance at church should be any more immune to changes in habit than my prayer life or, for that matter, my choice to exercise or my decision to see God in all things.

I suppose in the end the several factors taken together, opportunity, relationship, community and habit are all mixed up somehow and I've not really answered Harshorn's question in a particularly meaningful way−but it's been fun to think about.