The Church of St. Thomas the Apostle is located in Hollywood, California, on Hollywood Blvd, but in the residential section, not like, the strip. It took us a minute to find parking, but the greeter at the door was nice, and didn't seem to mind that we were a few minutes late. As we walked in, the unmistakable odor of incense wafted over us, and I, for one, was in heaven. The sanctuary's thick stone piers rose up out of the pews, and reminded me a lot of St. Mark's back home. In lieu of stained glass, the walls around the church were decorated with what appeared to be either bronze or well-worn wood representations of the stations of the cross, and the pews were sufficiently uncomfortable, just how I like them.
As an Anglo-Catholic church, St. Thomas is part of the Anglican communion, but espouses a set of liturgical practices that have gone out of style in the more modern and progressive Episcopal churches. It is, as the assistant priest told me after the service, "the highest church you can find in LA," and I could feel it throughout the service. The prayer formulae we used were drawn directly from the King James Bible, complete with "thees" and "thines" and "thous." Needless to say, I loved it. As torn as I am between the familiar comfort of the Episcopal church and the pomp of the Catholic church, St. Thomas may be the place I'll end up, but there is still a search to go on.
