In Japanese there are a set of words ending in dô - meaning "way"; it is really the Japanese form of the Chinese Tao - such as kadô, the "way of flowers", that is, the traditional Japanese art of flower arrangement; chadô, the "way of tea", the art of the celebrated "tea ceremony"; or budô, "the warrior way", the path of following the martial arts. The implication is that a cultured person will cultivate one or another of these traditional arts, and that it will not be only a hobby but will set the tone of one’s whole life. The practice should become, to employ a somewhat overused phrase but one that fits well here, a "way of life". The follower of kadô would seek in everything to demonstrate the elegance, balanced diversity of colour and quiet beauty of an exquisite Japanese flower arrangement; the practitioner of a martial art the positive virtues of the warrior way: utter determination, self-discipline, indifference to life or death and full concentrated awareness in the present moment.

Religious practices too can overflow into ways of life: the Hindu devotional puja into a life filled with fervent love; the Presbyterian service into that tradition’s high awareness of calling and commitment; Muslim prayers into the sense of submission to the will of Allah, the Great and the Merciful, at all times and in all areas of one’s life that is the soul of Islam.

What then is the special spiritual "tone" or dô of Liberal Catholicism? Undoubtedly different occasions and different people would produce different answers. But on the basis of recent experiences I would like to suggest the words "gentle beauty" as a keynote quality of both Liberal Catholic worship and the Liberal Catholic "way of life". Gentle beauty I take to mean waves of energy expressed through matter and form, through human faces and material objects, in a manner that is "easy" and unobtrusive, yet communicates to the beholder love, deep understanding, and a sense of being raised by the waves’ gentle lifting and purifying strength to a higher spiritual level. The strength of gentle beauty is that of pure flowing water, of clear rivers or the breakers on a gentle sea. For water is a soft and yielding element, yet it lifts all that is able to float however heavy, and in time wears down the hardest rock; it washes all clean before it is finished, and despite all obstacles finds its way back to its source.

At the time of writing I have just returned from the Provincial Triennial Assembly and Clerical Synod of The Liberal Catholic Church in the United States, held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, under the auspices of the church of Our Lady Queen of Angels. I had a powerful sense that this kind of gentle beauty was the underlying quality of this conference, alike in its business sessions, its informal interrelationships among clergy and laity, and above all in the Solemn High Mass which was the culmination of the gathering.

In the business and educational meetings I kept sensing in the air a remarkable aura of gentleness, love, and joyous enthusiasm for one another and for our common cause despite what few differences there were. One could sense grace or gentle beauty in faces, words, and gestures. This characteristic is surely related to the fact that everyone there, bishops, priests, and deacons as well as laypeople, was present entirely out of freely-given devotion to the church, for of course no one however exalted receives any pay whatsoever for their services on behalf of our church and its Lord. This fact in itself has a tremendous purifying force, for it means, ideally, that love alone is the drive and therefore ought to be the supreme expression of our dedication. Of course one can labour in organisations for egotistical reasons even if there is no monetary motive, and I do not doubt that this has happened in The Liberal Catholic Church. Nonetheless I have known other voluntary organisations to be far more riven by politics and personality conflicts than this one was on this occasion.

What was special about this meeting? I believe I experienced an ultimate answer in the Eucharistic liturgy on Sunday, celebrated by the Regionary Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Hein van Beusekom. The harmonious colours of vestments and music, the slow and graceful movements of the many participants in this Solemn High Mass, making it like a great and solemn dance, or like the movements of the stars in the sky, created a time of transcendent loveliness. It was an hour of wonder, like entering a fairyland kingdom quite apart from the grime of this world; it was an hour of love in the highest and most divine sense of the word, as we ritually greeted one another in harmony, with graceful reverences and in the exchange of peace. Yet it was also an occasion of empowerment as divine grace streamed down through the instruments of the rite, the sacred vestments and gestures and above all the Sacred Host and the act of receiving Holy Communion. That force enabled us to return to the earthly outer planes not merely to disdain them but to cleanse them, to make them if only a little more like the world of the sanctuary.

This is the special quality of Liberal Catholicism as a way of life: that as we make the fine art of liturgical beauty the essential dô or "way" of our spirituality, so that same sense of grace, wonder, and power ought to permeate all of our lives, so that in the way we walk, speak, smile, and act, the way we work and the way we play, should have that same liturgical love and joy about it, and that all whom we meet, human or animal, should sense it and be touched by it. This is the gentleness and beauty by which we will wear down the hard rocks of this earth, and it represents the special Liberal Catholic strategy for engaging that task. Certainly there are real evils in the world that must be confronted with the forthrightness of the Old Testament prophets, and we must not be so mild as to shrink from facing them. Yet even there, gentle persuasion combined with the power of example as we live lives of a different quality can often accomplish more than harsh condemnation.

This is, I would suggest, a special Liberal Catholic way. It is certainly a way of self-transformation, aided by our worship experiences. For the ordinary human pattern is to go through a range of emotions, one after the other. Sometimes we may be in a mellow mood and respond to provocation with gentleness, but at other times we are edgy and temperamental, and may respond with words or even violent acts we will later regret. To be permeated evenly with a personality of gentle beauty, varied but all its manifestations beautiful in their own way, is a sublime gift of grace toward which we can only continually open ourselves and grow.