It would be fair to say that I got involved with ecumenical work by accident. But I stayed in it for nearly seven years out of a growing conviction that if we Orthodox do not try by all means to enter into dialogue with.other Christians, we are retreating into sectarianism and failing to act as the Church.

In autumn 1983 1 was appointed co-secretary of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, initially with an Anglican priest as a colleague. Founded in 1928 by members of Orthodox and Protestant student movements, the Fellowship is based in London but has about 2,000 members spread over many different countries. For Orthodox, its specific focus on Orthodox/Western contacts offers an almost unique advantage over other, Western-centred ecumenical organisations : this focus means that Orthodox concerns and approaches often get the chance to set the agenda.

Another particular feature of the Fellowship's type of ecumenism is the emphasis on worship as its centre - not specially constructed 'ecumenical services', but sharing, as far as is possible without Communion, in each other's ordinary worship so as to meet another Christian tradition in practice, in life. This makes the important point that theology and worship hang together. But it also makes something more. In much ecumenical work, there seems to be a sharp division between theological dialogue, a field for the 'experts', and common action where theological differences are irrelevant and should not be allowed to interfere with love and goodwill. But once you place the worship of the traditions involved at the heart of an ecumenical encounter, it is impossible to maintain this artificial and unevangelical division. Anyone who is seriously involved in their own tradition can be involved in the quests for better mutual theological understanding not because they have studied theology but because they live it and pray it.

My predecessors had been Orthodox and Anglican, lay and ordained, men and women - but predominantly they had been Anglican clergy. Having a young Orthodox woman in the job was not unprecedented, but it was sufficiently unusual to make people sit up and take notice. It may also have helped to highlight a few of the opportunities - and - some of the problems - facing Orthodox in ecumenism today.

A grave problem, I believe, was implicit in a certain reaction to my appointment : "A woman as Orthodox secretary of the Fellowship? But surely the Orthodox will be the last people to ordain women". Since the job had regularly been done by lay people in the past and formed no place in the Church hierarchy, this reaction was bewildering in its irrelevance. Much more worrying, however, was the view of Orthodoxy that it revealed: hierarchy was confused with clericalism, and, largely as a consequence, the Church was seen as a classically male-dominated organisation. Repeatedly I was at pains to explain how little resemblance such a picture bore to my own experience, where the prominence of women at all levels of Church life was simply a natural consequence of recognising the variety of roles performed by the laity according to the tradition of the Church.

But then, people see what they want to see, and it is a sad 'fact that the non-Ortbodox attracted to Orthodoxy include a significant number - by no means all - of conservatives looking for a calm haven. And at present, this tends to mean especially the die-hard opponents of women's ordination in their own denominations. I am not suggesting for a moment that such people's interest should be spurned. But it is disconcerting to meet people of a very different outlook who have written Orthodoxy off, not because they, have met it and disliked what they saw, but because they have seen it only through the eyes of self-appointed ambassadors who, perhaps unwittingly, have created a version of 'Orthodoxy' according to their own image.

It might be mischievous, but certainly not untrue, to say that I sometimes had the feeling that the Orthodox were being used as a church political football in the contest over women's ordination to the priesthood. After all. I was working in a predominately Anglican/Orthodox organisation at a time when the official Anglican/Orthodox Joint Doctrinal Dialogue had nearly run aground on the issue. Some people were worried that even our own totally unofficial contacts would go the same way; others thought that the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius should weigh in on the side of campaigners against women's ordination in the Church of England. Fortunately, neither of these things came about. But the expectation pointed to a real danger: that Orthodoxy gets pigeonholed according to categories which for us are irrelevant, or at least not primary. Whether it is labelled 'against women's ordination', or sought after for 'spirituality' or for 'bells and smells', the effects are similar: we allow a whole range of people to be put off even approaching the Orthodox faith.

I insist on this because in my experience of ecumenical encounters over the past few years, it is those between Orthodox and people who had never thought of looking at Orthodoxy which seemed the most mutually rewarding. For example, I was privileged to attend a number of ecumenical women's meetings: often the language and mindset of many of the participants, not to mention their perception of what the Church is, struck me as quite alien. Yet it was always exciting to see how much a few Orthodox could contribute to and gain from such encounters. It was not the answers to questions addressed directly to the Orthodox, which tended to boil down to "Why don't you have women priests?" so much as the spontaneous and unlooked for responses from Orthodoxy. "Theology is an academic discipline dominated by a rationalistic, male mindset": "but isn't theology above all the experience of the Saints?" "Receiving the teaching of the Church means a whole lot of women sitting quietly in their pews while a man lectures to them": "but don't we learn most of all from the services themselves, and from the attitudes and actions of our fellow-worshippers, in church and at home?". "The Church gives us an idealised image of the Virgin Mary that real women can't related to" : "but she is a real person, alive in Christ - we can relate to her and know her directly."

Another area where there seems immense potential for an Orthodox contribution is that of environmental concern. Many expect the Orthodox tradition to have something to say about the reverence for the material world; after all, we venerate icons, we bless water and fruit and any number of other things. But too many more believe that Christianity is basically dualistic, and that we have to turn to eastern religions or paganism to learn respect for God's creation. I believe that Orthodoxy is uniquely placed to give the lie to this idea- not by presenting something we claim as our own, but by recalling everyone, not least ourselves, to the fullness of our common and original Christian heritage. The reaction to any Orthodox contribution on this subject is inspiring - but it can also be embarrassing. We are surrounded by a wealth of creation-affirming hymns, psalms and rites to make any Christian environmentalist eat their heart out. We can point to the example of the ascetics and Saints to show that there really is a radically different way of relating to the material world, and that it has tangible effects. But when someone asks how all this affects that way of life of the average Orthodox - this is when we start to realise how much we have to learn.

This cannot be helped. We cannot wait to become saints - or even, for that matter, to achieve better cooperation between the various Orthodox Churches - before going out to meet other Christians. I am increasingly convinced that in countries where we are a minority among other established Christian traditions, such an outreach is a central part of our mission.

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