If Anglicanism has a physical home, it is here in Canterbury where I write while gazing at the great cathedral. We are a group of rectors of large North American congregations, who meet once a year after Easter to refresh our theological minds and to support one another's work and spirits.

We thought it important to come here as an expression of belonging to the Anglican family at a time when some question our loyalty, or even faithfulness. We are listening to and talking with some leaders and servants of the Anglican Communion.

I came to this conference with, I confess, some ambivalence about whether unity or affection for things Anglican should trump the important stand our American Episcopal church has taken on incorporating new insights on human sexuality with the Christian and biblical ethic of love.

After just two days I am still ambivalent, but I am clearer about a couple of things. Even if our church is somehow excluded from Anglican structures, we will not be excommunicated in any sense. There are too many friendships, too many shared traditions, too many powerful missionary partnerships that we and others value. We won't walk away. Our friends won't walk away.

Another thing made clearer in the English context is that whatever else Anglicanism is, it is tied up in Africa and Asia with colonialism. We do well to confess that, even among Christians, American political and cultural power raises hackles in the global village. Not as individuals perhaps, but as icons, we are not innocents.

In our early discussions, we were reminded that, as someone has observed about Christianity itself, learning the faith is more like learning a language than a set of items of belief. Doctrine is the grammar of that faith -- necessary for clarity and communication but not the same thing as faith itself.

Anglicans have a common language in the sense that we learn it best by using what we have to make daily life possible, by absorbing from one another an almost instinctive habit of heart and mind. Like learning a language, there comes a moment when you stop thinking and start simply hearing and speaking.

Here, just inland from the English Channel, faith was planted by a missionary, Augustine of Canterbury as he came to be known. His wisdom and the wisdom of the bishop who sent him in the 6th century was that the people there already had their language and customs. Some of those should be respected and retained. Local ways sometimes give depth and relevance to a universal faith without diminishing its universality.

That is what I hope will come to be true of the brave and venturesome work our church is doing. That will require sensitivity and patience, beyond what any of the combatants have shown thus far. But as with the faith-worn paths and aisles and the soaring arches of Canterbury Cathedral, there can be a rightness and beauty that is built from our struggle that will give life and hope and justice long after our days.