Ottawa Anglicans approved the blessing of same-sex marriages by a vote of 177 to 97 yesterday, the first diocese in Canada to support the blessings since the national church nixed them this summer...J.
...The diocese of Montreal is expected to debate a similar motion at its own annual meeting, or synod, next week.
Ottawa Bishop John Chapman said he welcomed yesterday's vote because it tells him where the diocese stands on the issue. However, he stressed that the final decision on whether to bless gay marriages still rests with him, and he expects to take his time making that decision. He wants to talk to other bishops, nationally and internationally, before going ahead with a policy.
"It's not helpful to walk alone. We're not afraid to walk alone, but we don't want to walk alone"...
...Yesterday's delicately-worded motion did not ask that gay couples be allowed to marry in an Anglican church, or even that their civil unions be blessed. It just asked that priests be given the right to approach the bishop for permission for such a blessing, should their parish approve. This way, priests and parishes who are not comfortable with gay marriage need not concern themselves with it...
...The motion
'Be it resolved that this Synod requests that the Bishop grant permission for clergy, whose conscience permits, to bless duly solemnized and registered civil marriages between same-sex couples, where one party is baptized; and that he authorizes an appropriate rite and guidelines for its use in supportive parishes.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Ottawa Approves Blessings
From the Ottawa Citizen:
Saturday, October 13, 2007
The CAPA Statements
The Council of African Anglican Provinces met earlier this month in Quatre Bornes, Mauritius. Two statements were issued after the meeting; one from CAPA, whose members include laity, clergy, bishops, and archbishops from the provinces of Burundi, Central Africa, Congo, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Southern Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and West Africa, and a second statement from the Primates who were present (both statements are included in the EL article linked above).
I found it curious that the CAPA statement made almost no reference to the current unpleasantness within the Anglican Communion and instead seemed to focus on matters relevant to Africa. The Primates' statement, on the other hand, was almost all about matters outside Africa.
The Lead points us to an article that explains at least part of the reason for the disparity in the two statements; Council Resists Sexuality Debate, by the Rev. Edgar Ruddock, International Relations Director and a Deputy General Secretary of USPG: Anglicans in World Mission:
J.
I found it curious that the CAPA statement made almost no reference to the current unpleasantness within the Anglican Communion and instead seemed to focus on matters relevant to Africa. The Primates' statement, on the other hand, was almost all about matters outside Africa.
The Lead points us to an article that explains at least part of the reason for the disparity in the two statements; Council Resists Sexuality Debate, by the Rev. Edgar Ruddock, International Relations Director and a Deputy General Secretary of USPG: Anglicans in World Mission:
...The Mauritius meeting of CAPA rightly focused on the challenges facing the continent: poverty, war, injustice, debt, natural disaster. But there was no appeal for pity, but rather for the Churches to work for transformation as never before; to share the good news with renewed energy and sensitivity in the face of religious pluralism, growing materialism, and educational challenge. For the sake of all this, we were reminded again and again to “Rejoice in the Lord always!”It appears that African Anglicans, with the exception of their Primates, have had enough of North Americans trying to set their agenda. Instead, it seems they are going to work together to meet the challenges facing Africa. Good for them.
How sad, though, that the fractures of the Communion’s struggles over sexuality kept appearing, in an attempt to persuade the meeting to adopt an entrenched line in response to the US Bishops’ statement from New Orleans (News, 28 September).
How sad that whenever we looked at a document, we found it had been drafted by a Western pen. How sad that paragraphs appeared in the draft communiqué that spoke of matters that had not even been debated. And how encouraging it was that the meeting roundly threw them out, and left the issue of sexuality to the Primates...
...While there was a concerted attempt to get both the Council and the CAPA Primates to take a firm stand with the “Global South” and against Lambeth, this was clearly not the mood of the meeting. Their concern was an African agenda. Yes, the majority take a conservative view on the sexuality debate, but there was much talk over coffee and tea about the pressure being exerted by the US conservatives (who were very visibly present at the meeting) to “keep CAPA on board”. Many resented this, even those who would sympathise with the position...
...Yet the mood of the meeting was expressed most strongly when the final communiqué, which, it appeared, had been drafted largely by the Rt Revd Martyn Minns, was discussed. Its many references to the sexuality debate, which had simply not been discussed, were voted off...
J.
Friday, October 12, 2007
"Sail in the Wilderness" Website
The school in Central Tanganyika project now has its own website:
Sail in the Wilderness: Eccentric Episcopalians Building a School
As you'll see, Harry has done some good work in launching this site. Keep in mind this it is a work in progress. Here's some of the topics currently offered:
School for School Builders
Web Implementation
All Hands on Deck
From Jake's to Africa
Volunteer
Dreams and Visions
Come Sail in the Wilderness
We'll continue to sponsor this project here at Jake's place, but this new site will allow us to have a place to focus specifically on building a school.
Go take a look. Thanks, Harry, for providing this project a home on the net.
J.
Sail in the Wilderness: Eccentric Episcopalians Building a School
As you'll see, Harry has done some good work in launching this site. Keep in mind this it is a work in progress. Here's some of the topics currently offered:
School for School Builders
Web Implementation
All Hands on Deck
From Jake's to Africa
Volunteer
Dreams and Visions
Come Sail in the Wilderness
We'll continue to sponsor this project here at Jake's place, but this new site will allow us to have a place to focus specifically on building a school.
Go take a look. Thanks, Harry, for providing this project a home on the net.
J.
Syncretic Nigerians?
epiScope points us to this curious story:
However, I do find it highly ironic that in the land that has given us Abp. Akinola, one of the most outspoken critics of our culture, we find such things going on. With so much apparent work to be done in his own backyard, one wonders how he finds the time to launch missions in ours.
J.
...Across West Africa, churches or mosques can be found in virtually every settlement: evidence of deep Christian and Muslim roots sown by the merchants, missionaries and slave traders who brought the religions hundreds of years ago. But also firmly settled in the red soil are indigenous practices that West Africans integrate with the foreign beliefs.I do not know enough about the culture of Nigeria to stand in judgment of such practices. I recommend that we all be careful about attempting to inject our values into their world.
The results may sometimes seem to flout the monotheistic holy books, the Bible and Quran. But many West African faithful say their interpretations are equally valid — although they don't always tell their pastors or imams...
...In the largely Christian areas farther south, many professed Christians have more than one wife, which tallies with pre-Christian practices where men took on many spouses to ensure survival of the bloodline during times of drought or war.
Some people practice both Islam and Christianity. One taxi driver in Freetown, Sierra Leone, tells of traveling with his first wife to mosque on Friday and his second wife to church on Sunday.
In Nigeria, shrines with old icons abound, with members of many ethnic groups praying to their old gods...
..."Generally Christianity tries to preach against what's considered idolatry, or idol worship. There may be aspects of local culture that the church allows, but as long as it tries to wipe out the worship of God, we're against it," said Rev. Akintunde Popoola, a spokesman for the Anglican Communion in Nigeria...
..."Some people may say we're worshipping idols. But no, this is our heritage and we can't forget it," says Oladunjoye Wasiu, a 25-year-old student standing by the river. "Allah sent the water in the days of our forefathers, so there's a rapport," he says.
"We Yoruba people, we have many small deities, but they are all servants of God," says Osunleti, the artist. "All these idols are servants of God: I'm a Christian, I'm a Muslim, I'm an idol worshipper, I'm an artist, I believe in everything," he says.
"I just believe in God. We're all servants of God, and we can pray through anything."
However, I do find it highly ironic that in the land that has given us Abp. Akinola, one of the most outspoken critics of our culture, we find such things going on. With so much apparent work to be done in his own backyard, one wonders how he finds the time to launch missions in ours.
J.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Sail in the Wilderness Project (Tanganyika School)
Here is Harry's latest update:
______________________________
Jakobeans of Every Stripe:
Here’s a summary of comments on the School Project. I am proposing to call the project—not the school—Sail in the Wilderness. I learned from a comment that, more or less, that’s what Tanzania means.
Here's a summary of responses. I've actually tried to incorporate every single comment into these statements. If you feel your voice isn't present here--please let me know! harrykel@mac.com.
This is a reduction, of course, and can't catch the spirit of much of the comments. And it was an enormous task going through them one by one, and then organizing them so that I could see everything each separate write wrote in different posts and then cull from all the postings the gist of the tasks people see ahead of us. I haven't listed in the following summary tasks that are quite specific.
I'll be talking to Emmanuel Esserwada at 815 on Friday about how to proceed with all of this. At the same time, I'll figure out how to create an initial web implementation to work on this--without it having to dictate the flow on Jake's. I'd really like this to be, somehow, something that is a Jake's blog project--that somehow people checking in here have a way to see easily what's happening. We'll see.
By the way, Katharine did read the post. She wrote a lovely note, expressed her delight at all the response, and thinks good things will come of our working with Esserwada.
Keep the faith!
FIRST WAVE OF RESPONSE TO SCHOOL PROJECT
Jakobytes offerred prayers and reminded each other to keep praying. To listen for the Spirit. To be open to healing. To notice the light. And to laugh.
Many comments address the need to find balance between: being and doing, prayer and contemplation, practicing compassion and fighting oppression.
Many encouragements to be counted, to participate, to stand up run through the comments—but in many variations. Sometimes we encourage ourselves to stand up as anonymous Christians—not to let our exclusion by the church deprive us of our right to be anonymous and humble. And sometimes we are called upon the show up with a name and a face. And to be in other people’s faces.
There was concern that we remember there is work to be done at home where so many people don’t graduate from high school, and where in many places people aren’t learning to read.
Over and over the comments urge that we keep communicating! That I communicate forward momentum on the project, that we communicate our own journeys to each other, that we learn from those who have things to teach us, and above all that we communicate with the people we are proposing to aid.
Many want us to remember not to be a doormats at home. A good dose of cynicism and challenge makes the Pollyanna-ish idea of building a school a little less rosey and perhaps, in the long run, more open to reality and consequently, more possible
We need to set up a funding process. This will follow setting up an organizing process and after talks with 815. There are Jakeobytes who do grant writing, and so part of any sound fiscal reality in the project should include that.
We must avoid colonial mentality. Start a listening process! Don’t even imagine what people in Africa need without talking to them. Example: sending in supplies can be damaging to local economy and culture.
There are many people who post at Jakes who have substantial experience doing this kind of work, and many have spent time in Africa! This surprised me. And I’m thrilled. The urgings from these folks seem to be: Don’t tell, listen.
Remember that when different cultures meet there is much to celebrate, but that being pliable and willing to bend and stretch your limits (compromise) may also be necessary. For Babel to become Pentecost we may have to experience Crucifixion and Ressurection.
Good Mission work might require (might always require) compromise. When two cultures confront each other both must find ways to bend if Babel is to become Pentecost.
Education makes progress. It is the main means of progress. Without educational systems, addressing issues of bigotry is pointless.
We need to be students too. To learn about the Church’s organization. About mission. About Africa. About the history of Tanganyika and the church there.
We should—and will—explore existing organizations and missions and people: Episcopal Relief, Aid Workers, World Bank, UN, Lutherans, Quakers, Dorothy (a Jakeobyte and old “Afrika hand”), Atlanta and New York dioceses with relationships with Central Tanganyika, Debbie Shaw (Jakobyte who taught in Kenya), deaconmark (his parish built a school in Uganda), Craig Sweeney (his parish, Epiphany Glenburn, works with Pygmies in Uganda, Diocese of Bethlehem (see website) is raising $3.6 million to rebuild the Anglican Church in southern Sudan, Young Adults Service Corps, Mission Works, jimB’s parish is building a clinic in Sudan, Lisa Fox (Jakeobyte who spent time in Souther Sudan), NightOwl (Jakeobyte who has spent time in Rwanda), revLois’s parish has raised $5K to support a clinic in Sierra Leone, Sara Dylan Breuer did missionary work in Kenya and speaks Swahili, : St. Wilfrid of York Episcopal Church in Huntington Beach, CA
There is very reasonable concern that we do not expect our good intentions to be what the world will see. We’ll want to sure we get to know people abroad, and they get to know us and that these relationships, and the work of locals, become what people in Central Tanganyika see.
We can’t help ourselves or anyone else by living in denial. The HoB statement sucks for many of us. Homophobia abroad and at home is rapant. The church is flawed, the communion critically flawed. Stay real.
We can and should share our awkardness and vulnerability.
It was nice to come across posts that had clear statements of people’s personal limits. We should remember that doing a little is doing a lot, and that we shouldn’t succumb to ‘enthusiasm.’
In learning about the history and politics and economics of Central Tanganyika, we should also learn the stories, the jokes, art and culture or the place.
Harry
harrykel@mac.com
_________________________________________________
I'll continue to add links to updates near the top of the sidebar on the right.
J.
______________________________
Jakobeans of Every Stripe:
Here’s a summary of comments on the School Project. I am proposing to call the project—not the school—Sail in the Wilderness. I learned from a comment that, more or less, that’s what Tanzania means.
Here's a summary of responses. I've actually tried to incorporate every single comment into these statements. If you feel your voice isn't present here--please let me know! harrykel@mac.com.
This is a reduction, of course, and can't catch the spirit of much of the comments. And it was an enormous task going through them one by one, and then organizing them so that I could see everything each separate write wrote in different posts and then cull from all the postings the gist of the tasks people see ahead of us. I haven't listed in the following summary tasks that are quite specific.
I'll be talking to Emmanuel Esserwada at 815 on Friday about how to proceed with all of this. At the same time, I'll figure out how to create an initial web implementation to work on this--without it having to dictate the flow on Jake's. I'd really like this to be, somehow, something that is a Jake's blog project--that somehow people checking in here have a way to see easily what's happening. We'll see.
By the way, Katharine did read the post. She wrote a lovely note, expressed her delight at all the response, and thinks good things will come of our working with Esserwada.
Keep the faith!
FIRST WAVE OF RESPONSE TO SCHOOL PROJECT
Jakobytes offerred prayers and reminded each other to keep praying. To listen for the Spirit. To be open to healing. To notice the light. And to laugh.
Many comments address the need to find balance between: being and doing, prayer and contemplation, practicing compassion and fighting oppression.
Many encouragements to be counted, to participate, to stand up run through the comments—but in many variations. Sometimes we encourage ourselves to stand up as anonymous Christians—not to let our exclusion by the church deprive us of our right to be anonymous and humble. And sometimes we are called upon the show up with a name and a face. And to be in other people’s faces.
There was concern that we remember there is work to be done at home where so many people don’t graduate from high school, and where in many places people aren’t learning to read.
Over and over the comments urge that we keep communicating! That I communicate forward momentum on the project, that we communicate our own journeys to each other, that we learn from those who have things to teach us, and above all that we communicate with the people we are proposing to aid.
Many want us to remember not to be a doormats at home. A good dose of cynicism and challenge makes the Pollyanna-ish idea of building a school a little less rosey and perhaps, in the long run, more open to reality and consequently, more possible
We need to set up a funding process. This will follow setting up an organizing process and after talks with 815. There are Jakeobytes who do grant writing, and so part of any sound fiscal reality in the project should include that.
We must avoid colonial mentality. Start a listening process! Don’t even imagine what people in Africa need without talking to them. Example: sending in supplies can be damaging to local economy and culture.
There are many people who post at Jakes who have substantial experience doing this kind of work, and many have spent time in Africa! This surprised me. And I’m thrilled. The urgings from these folks seem to be: Don’t tell, listen.
Remember that when different cultures meet there is much to celebrate, but that being pliable and willing to bend and stretch your limits (compromise) may also be necessary. For Babel to become Pentecost we may have to experience Crucifixion and Ressurection.
Good Mission work might require (might always require) compromise. When two cultures confront each other both must find ways to bend if Babel is to become Pentecost.
Education makes progress. It is the main means of progress. Without educational systems, addressing issues of bigotry is pointless.
We need to be students too. To learn about the Church’s organization. About mission. About Africa. About the history of Tanganyika and the church there.
We should—and will—explore existing organizations and missions and people: Episcopal Relief, Aid Workers, World Bank, UN, Lutherans, Quakers, Dorothy (a Jakeobyte and old “Afrika hand”), Atlanta and New York dioceses with relationships with Central Tanganyika, Debbie Shaw (Jakobyte who taught in Kenya), deaconmark (his parish built a school in Uganda), Craig Sweeney (his parish, Epiphany Glenburn, works with Pygmies in Uganda, Diocese of Bethlehem (see website) is raising $3.6 million to rebuild the Anglican Church in southern Sudan, Young Adults Service Corps, Mission Works, jimB’s parish is building a clinic in Sudan, Lisa Fox (Jakeobyte who spent time in Souther Sudan), NightOwl (Jakeobyte who has spent time in Rwanda), revLois’s parish has raised $5K to support a clinic in Sierra Leone, Sara Dylan Breuer did missionary work in Kenya and speaks Swahili, : St. Wilfrid of York Episcopal Church in Huntington Beach, CA
There is very reasonable concern that we do not expect our good intentions to be what the world will see. We’ll want to sure we get to know people abroad, and they get to know us and that these relationships, and the work of locals, become what people in Central Tanganyika see.
We can’t help ourselves or anyone else by living in denial. The HoB statement sucks for many of us. Homophobia abroad and at home is rapant. The church is flawed, the communion critically flawed. Stay real.
We can and should share our awkardness and vulnerability.
It was nice to come across posts that had clear statements of people’s personal limits. We should remember that doing a little is doing a lot, and that we shouldn’t succumb to ‘enthusiasm.’
In learning about the history and politics and economics of Central Tanganyika, we should also learn the stories, the jokes, art and culture or the place.
Harry
harrykel@mac.com
_________________________________________________
I'll continue to add links to updates near the top of the sidebar on the right.
J.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
From the Bishop of New Hampshire
Bishop Gene Robinson has offered an Open Letter to the LGBT Community. Here a few segments.
Regarding the goal of the House of Bishops at their recent meeting and Bp. Robinson's personal goal at that meeting:
Lots of other statements from various bishops are being made public. This one seemed particularly unique, and so worth noting. Have you seen any other public statements that you would recommend for a closer look?
J.
Regarding the goal of the House of Bishops at their recent meeting and Bp. Robinson's personal goal at that meeting:
...It was our goal to describe the Church as it currently is: NOT of one mind, but struggling to be of one heart.Regarding B033:
My own goal – and that of many bishops – was to do NOTHING at this meeting. That is, our goal, in response to the Primates, was simply to state where we are as an Episcopal Church, not to move us forward or backward. Sometimes, “progress” is to be found in holding the ground we’ve already achieved, when “moving forward” is either untimely or not politically possible. And, doing nothing substantive respects the rightful reminder to us from many in the Senior House that the House of Bishops cannot speak for the whole Church, but rather must wait until all orders of ministry are gathered for its joint deliberations at General Convention...
...While many of us worked hard to block B033 and voted against it at General Convention, it IS the most recent declaration of all orders of ministry gathered as a Church. The Bishops merely restated what is, as of the last General Convention.On blessings:
Yes, we did identify gay and lesbian people as among the group included in those who ‘present a challenge” to the Communion. That comes as a surprise to no one. It is a statement of who we are at the moment. Sad, but true...
...On the issue of same sex unions, I argued that our statement be reflective of what is true right now in the Episcopal Church: that while same sex blessings are not officially permitted in most dioceses, they are going on and will continue to go on as an appropriate pastoral response to our gay and lesbian members and their relationships. Earlier versions of our response contained both sides of this truth. I argued to keep both sides of that truth in the final version, providing the clarity asked for by the Primates.On the JSC response:
Others made the argument that to state that “a majority of Bishops do not sanction such blessings” implied that a minority do in fact sanction such blessings, and many more take no actions to prevent them. All this without coming right out and saying so. That argument won the day. I think it was a mistake.
...Let me also state strongly that I believe that the Joint Standing Committee of the ACC and Primates MISunderstood us when they stated that they understood that the HOB in fact “declared a ‘moratorium on all such public Rites.’” Neither in our discussions nor in our statement did we agree to or declare such a moratorium on permitting such rites to take place. That may be true in many or most dioceses, but that is certainly not the case in my own diocese and many others. The General Convention has stated that such rites are indeed to be considered within the bounds of the pastoral ministry of this Church to its gay and lesbian members, and that remains the policy of The Episcopal Church...A closing slogan:
...I voted “yes” to the HOB statement. I believe it was the best we could do at this time. I am far less committed to being ideologically and unrelentingly pure, and far more interested in the “art of the possible.” Am I totally pleased with our statement? Of course not. Do I wish we could have done more? Absolutely. Can I live with it? Yes, I can. For right now. Until General Convention, which is the appropriate time for us to take up these issues again as a Church, with all orders of ministry present. I am taking to heart the old 60’s slogan, “Don’t whine, organize!”A good letter, it seems to me. There's parts that make me feel a bit uncomfortable, such as the discussion of the "public" and "private" terminology. I've never been fond of our current "don't ask don't tell" policy, as it seems to be less than honest, and involves the clergy in games of subterfuge, which cannot help but impact the quality of the intended pastoral care.
Lots of other statements from various bishops are being made public. This one seemed particularly unique, and so worth noting. Have you seen any other public statements that you would recommend for a closer look?
J.
Those Crazy Americans
There hasn't been much worth noting going on in the Anglican world lately. A few bishops and archbishops issuing statements demanding that those "ugly Americans" better repent or they will make more bishops, boycott Lambeth, and use primatial power to put the fear of God back into our heathen Yankee souls. In other words, the usual bluster.
To be quite honest, I'm starting to lose interest in their rants. Until they get some new material, I think I'm going to just stop paying much attention to them. We've got better things to do.
But, in comments someone pointed out a recent quote that was just too bizarre to pass up. It comes from Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali of Rochester:
Since the bishop has obviously had no personal experience of worship in the Episcopal Church, which, without exception in my experience, is rooted in the Book of Common Prayer, I suppose he is taking as Gospel the illusions of some wild eyed pistol packing refugees who have fled TEC because we have the audacity to consider justice and mercy to be important characteristics of the Christian faith.
Since this bishop must be the most gullible man currently wearing a purple shirt, let us add to his knowledge of how ugly Americans can really be, shall we? For his benefit, here is another reason to stay away from those crazy Yanks, brought to us by a most reputable author:
But if the bishop wants to really understand what is going on in America, I would suggest that he might want to actually worship in our churches and talk to our people, instead of swallowing whole uninspired legends created for no other reason than to fuel the fires of schism.
J.
To be quite honest, I'm starting to lose interest in their rants. Until they get some new material, I think I'm going to just stop paying much attention to them. We've got better things to do.
But, in comments someone pointed out a recent quote that was just too bizarre to pass up. It comes from Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali of Rochester:
...Bishop Nazir-Ali said profound differences needed to be resolved because the American Church had now drifted apart from traditional Christianity in a number of fundamental areas.Where do these people get this stuff? It would be funny if such a ridiculous statement had not appeared in the Telegraph, which may be cause for some uninformed folks to imagine such an absurd characterization might be true.
He claimed that American clergy were increasingly weaving other faiths such as Buddhism and Hinduism into their worship and many regarded the Bible as a man-made book that could be rewritten rather than a revelation from God...
Since the bishop has obviously had no personal experience of worship in the Episcopal Church, which, without exception in my experience, is rooted in the Book of Common Prayer, I suppose he is taking as Gospel the illusions of some wild eyed pistol packing refugees who have fled TEC because we have the audacity to consider justice and mercy to be important characteristics of the Christian faith.
Since this bishop must be the most gullible man currently wearing a purple shirt, let us add to his knowledge of how ugly Americans can really be, shall we? For his benefit, here is another reason to stay away from those crazy Yanks, brought to us by a most reputable author:
...I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout...I'm sure the good bishop will find that story much more interesting than the dull visions of meditating Buddhists infiltrating the Church and busy biblical translators inserting heretical snippets of obscure Hebrew and Greek texts into our Lectionary. If he likes the taste of the above offering, we've got plenty more. How about Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox? Pecos Bill? Or, for a more modern bit of Americana, I'd be happy to loan the bishop my DVD collection of the Matrix Trilogy.
But if the bishop wants to really understand what is going on in America, I would suggest that he might want to actually worship in our churches and talk to our people, instead of swallowing whole uninspired legends created for no other reason than to fuel the fires of schism.
J.
Monday, October 08, 2007
A School in Central Tanganyika
It sounds like there's quite a bit of enthusiasm regarding Harry's charge, given to him by our Presiding Bishop, that we build a school in Central Tanganyika. It seems to me that it is appropriate for us to learn a bit about this part of the world, while we await word from Harry regarding more of the particulars of this project.The Diocese of Central Tanganyika "covers Dodoma Urban and Rural with a population of over 1.2 million people, with a membership of over 500,000 Anglicans."
Regarding the educational needs of the diocese:
As Dodoma rural and urban districts are some of the least developed in the country and that government secondary schools are very few in the area, in order to be holistic in our ministry, the diocese is engaged in the promotion of education, from kindergarten through to primary and secondary education. We aim at offering the best education that the poorest can also afford. We have primary and secondary schools situated both in rural and urban areas to cater for the needs of all. The ratio of boys and girls is even, although we have paid special attention for the advancement of girls by building dormitories for them. Our schools are Canon Andrea Mwaka Primary and Secondary schools, Holy Trinity and Bishop Stanway Primary Schools, Buigiri School for the Blind and Mvumi Secondary School.
The Rt. Rev. Mdimi Mhogolo, Bishop of the Diocese of Central Tanganyika, met with our Presiding Bishop just before the Primates meeting in Dar es Salaam last February 14. Here is part of a report of the shared mission work going on in Central Tanganyika:Collaboration between the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Tanzania -- including missionary work in the dioceses of Dar es Salaam and Central Tanganyika -- was underscored as area missionaries shared perspectives with Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Bishop Mdimi Mhogolo.Kelly Tesh is working in Tanzania as part of a mission partnership established between the Diocese of Atlanta and the Diocese of Central Tanganyika. Here is an excerpt from one of her recent blog entries:
On the eve of the February 15-19 Primates' Meeting near Dar es Salaam, Jefferts Schori and Mhogolo of Central Tanganyika met with seven Episcopal missionaries to hear about their commitment to global mission and in support of their work throughout the East African province...
...Awww…that girl is so cute. My other colleague, Willy, the man in charge of organizing the shoes for distributions, gives her a new jumper and a shirt and shoes. The bishop’s wife just gave us a few boxes of clothes and shoes that came in on a container.The Diocese of New York has also established a partnership with the Diocese of Central Tanganyika through the Carpenters Kids Program.
There are always people in the office. Priests coming to chat, mama lishes coming in to collect their money to make breakfasts for the kids, others coming in from the villages to write their bi-monthy email to their link parish in New York. There are always people coming and going. I smile and greet them, stand up to shake their hand, but I never really know what’s happening. They talk too fast for me most of the time...
...I come back from lunch and see the little girl and her mother, (actually her aunt) in the hall again. I greet them and tell the girl in my broken Swahili that she looks nice in her new dress. She hides behind her mother’s leg.
I get to the office. Mmoti pulls me into the other room.
She is HIV positive.
What?
Who?
The little six year old girl in the new grey jumper.
He showed me the small white paper with light blue ink. For just under 3 dollars she received her HIV test. It came back:
REACTIVE.
Monday we will go together to the hospital for additional screening.
Please keep Mina* (name changed for privacy) in your prayers. She has already lost both her parents.
This weekend, be mindful of all those who have lost their parents...and all those who have lost a child...to circumstances that can be prevented or at least improved, with some help, education, and energy.
Some of you may be interested in Bishop Mdimi Mhogolo's January Epiphany letter. Here's part of it:
...The way we do God's mission is to strategize our mission and then look for resources for the mission. The recruitment of people, both within and outside the country becomes part of our efforts in realising God's mission. The material funding for God's mission impacts our goal to see God's mission is well resourced. ECUSA with its relief and development agencies is only a small part of our funding and partnership organizations.It looks like there is already a healthy relationship established between Central Tanganyika and the Episcopal Church. Building a diocesan school sounds like a real possibility.
The issue of homosexuality with its various understandings is not only an ECUSA issue, but involves all of our development and mission partners. If one is realistic, the issue of homosexuality and their money affects all our partner organisations, Churches, missionary agencies, governments and secular organisations. We then ask ourselves, why should we single out ECUSA and treat it differently?
We know that a substantial amount of money and funding that governments, Churches, and missionary societies receive, comes from gay and lesbian people.
We live in our cultural context where gay and lesbians are regarded as criminals punishable by long term imprisonments. We also live in a country where gay and lesbians are violently persecuted, mistreated, hated and ostracised. We as Black Africans know the hurts and permanent damage caused by our past experiences which still linger on to the present. We have gone through all that and we know how it hurts. Once we were regarded like animals to be shot at, less than humans, to be turned into slaves and without God, to be taught the Western Christian gods. We have gone through that and we don't want to go that way again.
We hold the Gospel of grace and love where all people are welcomed, loved, cared for and treated with dignity. We preach a Gospel of restoration, reconciliation, love, peace, grace and healing. Many people are already feeling bad, hurt, disoriented, frustrated and bitter. We do not want to make life worse for them; instead we provide spaces for grace, love, and care to grow, and healing to take place for all.
For this reason, we will continue to welcome all our true brothers and sisters, children and adults, adolescents and mature, black and white, African American and White Americans to work and have fellowship with us; in the same way we also welcome all Christians from the rest of the Christian world, both Anglicans and non-Anglicans; Christians and non-Christians.
If Episcopalians visit us, we ask them to honor and respect our Faith, our cultures, our traditions and our way of life in Jesus Christ. People or mission partners do not come to change us. They come to appreciate, share and learn of our faith, our Christian culture we have developed and our way of life as we work together for the kingdom of God on earth.
We are not a closed Church where we reject some and welcome others. We are an open Church where even our enemies can find food, love, care and shelter. We always try to become like Jesus Christ our master, to everyone who comes into our home...
I also noted that it appears that "visitors" from partner dioceses are regularly hosted. Anyone interested in a trip to Africa in the near future?
So, what information have you come up with?
J.
Friday, October 05, 2007
Harry's Dinner with Katharine
By special request, here is Harry's account of his dinner with our Presiding Bishop:
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I had dinner with the Presiding Bishop Katharine and her husband Richard last night. Wayne and I had come to Mackinac Island (pronounce it Mack-in-awe and you will sound like you’ve been here before) to attend an every-two-years clergy conference that is sponsored by the generous owners of the Hotel—one of the old grand hotels that is actually called Grand Hotel. Note bene: it is Grand Hotel and not The Grand Hotel. The hotel owners give the clergy a chance to stay here for three days of conference for almost nothing. It is generous in the extreme.
I’ll be honest with you. It’s not my favorite kind of thing to do. I love spending time with church people but I don’t particularly like them just because they are church people. I love spending time with clergy, and with their spouses/partners/husbands/wives. But I only like it so much. I found the conference difficult to navigate. Too many people telling you how everything in their parishes is going absolutely great. Everyone asks you at every possible chance if you’ve attended the Mackinac Island conference before and when you say ‘no’they all respond ‘Isn’t it the best thing possible?’ And of course it is in many ways, except the luncheon buffet served on tables twenty feet long and with so many people traveling up and down either side of them that you feel you are doing a Virginia Reel with a very angry rugby team. And of course, everyone has to really really like the liturgies or really really hate them and it’s a lot of energy to decide which. Oh yes, and there was that horrible moment when I inadvertently called a rector friend’s wife Whore of Babylon. But that story is for another day. (It only took fifteen minutes of explaining a long and complex thought process that was meant to demonstrate how the parish could perceive her in a different situation as…oh, not now. Maybe someday. When we parted company later in the day I apologized again and she said, “Actually, it’s of fun. Nobody’s ever called me the Whore of Babylon before.” Note to Wayne: do think twice before taking me to these events.)
Many, many clergy do not have a notion of how to take care of themselves—to indulge themselves in any way—and that is, really, the purpose of the conference. But for me? Well, there’s the thing about spending two or three days a year pretending like you’re a little more upper class than you are—I guess my old 60s informing rears its little ugly head. Quick, throw it another crab and lobster fritter… And my West Virginia mountain sensibility doesn’t mind style and class, it just doesn’t like the idea that you can take a bunch of ministers and pass them off as the Astors on the Titanic. It’s the reason I could never, ever get married (or blessed or not-blessed) in an Edwardian-style morning coat. To me that would be pretending that getting married somehow made me, for a day, upper crust and English. To me, the One Unforgivable Sin Against the Spirit may well be Anglophilia.
But, really—this unease with opulence in this form is what one sister calls, as she rolls her eyes, a luxury problem. The kind of problem anyone can afford to have. The kind of problem, ultimately, that isn’t a problem. The kind of problem that we all should be so lucky to have.
At check in: a raffle for the Episcopal Relief Fund—five dollars for a chance to have dinner with Her Nibs and, as he described himself to me, the Presiding Bishop Consort. I would never have entered merely for the chance to have dinner with her. I doubt I would have dropped my name into the basket if there was not a transfer of money to ministry by so doing. But I do put money in the Ronald MacDonald House collection containers—for kids with life-threatening illness. On the RARE OH SO VERY RARE occasions I buy something in MacDonald’s. And so with the dinner raffle. I was quite surprised when some lovely friends of mine won the raffle on the first night, and more surprised when I won it on the second night.
Your mind does race a bit. Is there anything you want to ask? Is there anything you want to tell? Well, yes—many things.
One thing I really wanted to ask her is how to get over the nightmares engendered by having seen a film, a year ago, called “3D Under The Sea” in an Imax theater. I am not in the least kidding when I say that this phantasmagoria of undersea creatures eating other undersea creatures in lurid, gargantuan projection sent me into a tailspin. I do not-absolutely do not-read the line from the psalm about ‘praise the lord all you sea-monsters under the sea’ the same since. Trust me, eating each other variously and sundily does not seem to me to be the same thing as praising the Lord, but then—our views are in some wise always parochial, aren’t they?
Katharine looked at me like I probably didn’t really ever get out of the house much.
“Well, I mostly only saw them in formaldehyde.”
Ah, I know better than to prepare conversation openers. They always go like this.
There were eight of us who got to share the table with Katharine and her husband, and dinner was set up so that you would basically talk to one for half the meal and then they would switch places and you would talk to the other.
I sat beside Katharine for the first half of the meal and across the long, narrow table from Richard, her husband. First, of course, the introductions.
This is something incredibly tricky when you come to dinner with the love of your life, and he’s not your husband nor you his. Earlier in the day Katharine had introduced Richard to the crowd as her ‘partner.’ She later told us that he had objected somewhat for fear that people might think they were unmarried. Of course, everything Katherine says is torn apart by people who like doing that sort of thing, so hisconcern was reasonable. But there was an impassioned and almost tearful complaint from the floor during questions about how this liberal stance was making it so difficult for people to live into the fullness of traditional marriage. (I’d definitely call that a luxury problem.)
But there I am trying to introduce Wayne. Husband? No. Spouse? No, because that generally implies marriage—it’s roots being, I believe, having to do with betrothal and marriage. Partner? Not after the problems it had created earlier in the day. So I introduced Wayne as the Love of My Life.
Now—our name tags did not identify us as clergy or paramours or anything of the sort. So the dynamic was fun throughout the conference. If I started introductions people would assume I was the Priest. I was, of course, merely the Love of the Priest’s Life. I have to say, everyone looked uncomfortable with my introducing Wayne as such. But herein is the problem of no rites and no names but full dignity. In the end all we have—is dignity, which just simmers in the rising afternoon heat without a “local habitation or a name.”
Mind you—it wasn’t the first time during the day that people had looked at me a bit askance. Earlier in the day we had meditated on the idea that we are the Lord’s beloved in whom he is well pleased. We shut our eyes for a full five minutes and thought about it. That, perhaps, was the best time at the conference. Just asking a huge room full of clergy and the Loves of Their Lives to shut up for five minutes is, to my mind, about the equivalent of moving the mountain to Mohammed. All I could think about were my toes.
Katharine asked us to talk to the people around us about what we had thought about. There were four others sitting near us, two other couples. No one spoke. And I thought, “Well, it won’t take me long.” And so I said, “I thought about my toes.” And four heads strained the necks underneath them into a head-moved-back-now position.
“Your toes?”
I try, when it’s quiet time, to notice what’s going on in my body. And because, I think, I had been wearing new shoes and my feet hurt, I was noticing how my feet felt and suddenly I thought of how strange toes are. Feet-fingers as the French call them.
“Well, yes. I think of my hands and I think, of course, how they can do work—and we ask often to let our hands do God’s work in the world. But toes? They seem completely extravagant! And that made me think I must be pleasing to God, or why would he have given ten of them to me? Ten! Extraordinary.”
And there it was again. The silence. Not really distressed or shocked or offended. Just more like “Huh?” silence. Oh well, I’m used to it. And I guess forgetting over and over that things I say can at any time produce this look of gentle wariness is just—well, a luxury problem.
Nonetheless, I had had a lovely day walking around with my toes, indisputable evidence that God is well pleased with me. They are the sort of gift only a sweetheart can give you—something so dear and utterly silly, like when one half of a couple has a thing about cute little pigs and the other loves them and wants to express it over and over until the house is full of statues of pigs flipping flapjacks, pictures of Poker Playing Pigs, pigs dressed like Elizabeth the First, little filigree pigs jumping over little filigree moons. Ten of them toes, I mean! One understands ten fingers of course, because how else could you open the peanut butter jar, spread the peanut butter (which involves picking up a knife), and eat the sandwich with any delicacy? But ten toes? They are as silly as Little Piggies Going to Market. And, while fingers can be elegant, it is a rare toe that achieves the heights of holy sensuousness. Mine, at any rate, are only as strangely appealing as the wonderful gift your beloved Cat Geoffrey brings you, the sweetest gift anyone could ever bring anyone: a freshly killed, mangled mole there at the bottom of the bed delivered with fierce pride and undying devotion.
And there I am. At dinner with the Presiding Bishop and her husband. And my ten toes. In no time at all we were crying.
I don’t know exactly why or how—but it is rare for me to sit down with anyone in the world and not find, within a few minutes, that this person is a distant cousin. Or someone I’ve just met will tell me something quite surprising that they haven’t told Wayne even though they were his friends first and have known him for years and years. (Earlier in the day the ‘partner’ of another priest had told me that years ago he had been the best man at his ‘partner’s wedding’—you do the math. Note bene: in the hope of being married properly some day, don’t forget that marriages can be as messy as anything, and sometimes far worse than not being married, even to someone you believe for a time to be the love of your life.) Or, out of the blue, we are talking about something deeply personal—sometimes painful—and this is what happened with Richard and me.
I had sworn to myself that I was not going to bring up the fact that myfather had died when I was seven, that he had crashed his one-engine Cessna out west, in Utah. But, like Paul, I do the thing I would not do. And Richard was telling me about a college friend of his (who turned out to be someone I knew quite well out in San Francisco) who could trace his own being gay to when he was six years old. And I related a story how my father had refused to do more ‘boy’ things with me when I was four even though my mother kept insisting, since she was afraid my “latent tendencies” might become problematic later. My father had ended the matter by saying playing ball and such would be phoney for us and it might do better to figure out how to get know the person I was getting ready to be. And then he asked about my father. Later. When I came out of the closet, how did my father take it. And I said, “Well, he died when I was seven.”
It turns out Katharine’s mother died after crashing her plane on Bainbridge Island. She didn’t die immediately like my father did. It took years. Katharine’s mother had many painful injuries, and intractable epilepsy. And as Richard related details of all this, he cried. And I realized that it was the first time in my entire life that I had told the story of my father dying in a plane crash and had someone respond in kind. Someone asked me later if it had been a healing moment. I’m not sure I know what that is. I would call it a sensible moment. We ought to stop, even in the middle of extravagant dinners, and cry a bit for the people we have loved and lost.
Katharine turned and asked her husband if he was okay. The way partners do. Half with a look and half with half a question. “Are you…”
And he said, “Harry’s father died in…crashed his plane…a single-engine Cessna. And I was telling him about your mother.”
And she just turned to me and looked at me wondering.
“I love thinking of him in his plane,” I said. “Just as I love thinking of my Presiding Bishop in hers. It doesn’t make me sad at all. I feel close to him when I think of him in the plane—I grew up in that plane. I have no way to think of him in heaven. I think of him in the plane. How happy he always was and how proud I was of him.”
Later, after she and Richard would switch places she would ask me to tell her more about my father. “You were only seven?”
“Yes, but here is the thing. I had this incredible conversation with him the night before he died. I’d had a fight with my sister, Alexis, and mom had sent us to our rooms and then in a bit he’d come around to see how we were doing—it was never a ‘wait till your father hears about this’ kind of thing. We would look forward to our father coming around, because he really liked kids and really knew how to talk to us.
I’d found out a couple of days before, by the way, during a visit from an uncle I hadn’t seen in 25 years that my father had liberated camps in Germany at the end of the war. I hadn’t known that—although I remember being six, and an old couple had come to our house for dinner and showed me the tattoos on their arms and said that once my father had helped them. I had no idea what they were talking about, but only a sense—a stillness really, as if everything in the world had stopped—a sense that I should listen. There was an assumption that I understood the tattoos, which I didn’t, not in their full sense. But I knew that they were showing them to me because I needed to know, even at each six, that something had been done to them that was unimaginable. And I can still see, in my mind’s eye, the exact gestures of their arms reaching out and turning to reveal the numbers. We humans have to count everything, number everything—even verses of scripture (does no one wonder what the cumulative effect of reading scripture stuffed with numbers is?). Even each other.
Father and I had agreed that I needed to apologize, and that had led to metaphysical topics that often accompany discussions about reconciliation —and I had asked ‘What are heaven and hell like?’
“And he said—Katharine, as amazing as this is, it’s absolutely true—he said, ‘Well, you know. If you have a fight with your sister and then go out and get run over by a car and die, there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s hell. But if you apologize, and make up with her, and the two of you feel happy about each other, and then a car hits you and you die—you don’t ever have to worry about whether or not you did the right thing and if she knew you really loved her. That’s heaven.’
“These were the last words my father shared with me.” And then I felt a tear fall from my cheek into my Mushroom Paté en Croute.
And I decided I wanted to share Nigerian stories. They are nearly impossible to share here because the essence of them is how joyfully I get to reproduce the musical tones, almost always of shock and surprise and delight, of almost every exchange I’ve had with a Nigerian.
When I shared the story of the Nigerian woman at my church doing laundry who said to a parishioner helping her, a woman who’d had quite a difficult time when Wayne and I came to the parish—when the Nigerian woman said (and please, you must imagine that each word said in this statement is like a brightly colored ball tossed into the air with musical abandon), “I do not see HOW you Anglicans can let these HOMOSEXUALS into your church this way. It is a TERRIBLE business.” And how the parishioner said…well…yes, a year ago she had thought so too. And Katharine laughed. Whether at my willingness to speak in such an unclergy-like way at the dinner table or at my delight in the Nigerian woman, I don’t know.
I asked her, “When you were at the meeting of the Primates, were you scared?”
“Well, what do you mean by scared?”
“Could you sleep at night.”
She smiled and said, “No. A couple of nights were really hard.”
I said, “Thank you for being willing to not be able to sleep for us.”
I asked her about meeting with the House of Bishops. She laughed and said it was much, much easier and that it really did feel like everyone was working on solutions not on stances and positions. And I really do believe her.
Toward the end of my conversation with her I said, “Katharine, I’m a mature Christian. I’ve been about this for awhile, and I don’t need anything from the House of Bishops, the Primates, or my Rector—who does, by the way, turn out to be the Love of My Life. I’d like, at this point, for you to give me a charge, during this time of ‘fasting,’ to take away from this table. I want something to call my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to do with me that has absolutely nothing to do with the Windsor Report.”
She looked at me quizzically for moment and then said, “Build a school in Central Tanganyika.”
She really heard my question and she really answered it.
I need help from all of you. Maybe moral support. Maybe a lot of money. Maybe fund raising. Maybe doing paper work. I don't know anything about building a school. I want gay and lesbian people and their friends to work on this, but I don't want it to be a gay and lesbian project. I want us to have an experience of being mission Christians without needing anything back from it at all. Including not needing the project to advance our cause. Perhaps it will, perhaps it won't. I turn that over to my Lord and Savior. I have a school to build. It seems almost crazy to be thinking I can do this-- but it isn't any crazier, really, when you think about it, than having toes.
I rarely, rarely, rarely pray for specific things. But I’ve been praying for awhile that I might suddenly have an idea of what I really need to be doing. Regardless of whether or not that prayer and Katharine’s sudden, extravagant urging are related—I have decided to do it.
I remember a story from my sister Alexis’s work in film. She was doing a Kevin Costner movie—she does makeup and hair—and they were filming in Hawaii where they’d flown Amazonian Yanomami people from the Amazon in, many of whom had never seen a movie, to be extras. And my sister told me that she had heard a conversation between two of the men. They had just realized how much money their paltry paychecks came to. And one shouted in joy, “We can build a school!” The first thing they thought of upon understanding that they were getting money was a school.
I have to tell you that while I completely understand the pain and confusion that all of us feel over the Windsor Report, etc., and the concomitant fracas—I cannot dwell long in that conflict. I was distressed at the conference when priests would stand at the microphone and cry—with real pain, of course—in response to the recent report from the House of Bishops. I heard one priest tell the Bishop of Eastern Michigan that after reading the report she had seriously thought of renouncing her priestly orders.
We, as mature Christians, are as innocent as doves and cunning as serpents. That means we cry for others, not for ourselves. We, ourselves, do not lose heart. Because we know the secret inner workings of things, that inspire and inform our relationships and love, and sweeten the sounds of children shouting and laughing in the city schoolyard, and make trees tall and give the great Buzzing to beetles. And what about glass being transparent! How stunning is that? And of course: toes.
Blessing our unions? Yes, of course. It has to happen sooner or later because sooner or later people are going to want their parish friends (and Rectors!) not to be living in sexual relationships with people they aren’t married to.
But for me, today—the important question isn’t whether the church will bless what God has already blessed. But how do I wake up and into the brilliant light of my love for the love of my life and carry that into the world which I am in—but not of. We ought to work this sort of thing out as gay and lesbian Christians. If we cry, we need to cry for those who are young in faith. We have known the deal all along. I’m not saying I’m not ready to get out and demonstrate. I’m not saying I’m willing to accept the Bishops’ or Primates’ reports or mandates. But I am saying, and really believe, that being a Christian, and Anglican, and Episcopalian, and a Holy Fool is about realizing that grace has bound you to your traditions, to authority in the Episcopal church, to numbing ambiguity, and above all to the idea that the greatest of these (being faith, hope and charity and everything that is, seen and unseen) is charity.
Run the good race, we must. Stand up for ourselves when people say horrible and bigoted things. Make safe places for everyone in the church. Celebrate the ways in which we, as gay people, are not like heterosexual people and the ways in which heterosexual people are not like us. These kinds of differences are indeed causes for joy, just as toes are. So many extravagant gifts from our maker.
I do not deny grief. I just try to notice when it takes me from being in the world to being of the world. And, oh my God, the last thing I mean to do here is treat anyone with any lack of consideration for pain in the process of bringing the church, the communion and the world to conscious fairness and charity with respect to me as a gay person and all of you as the sometimes eccentric sometimes heretical people you may or may not be, gay or straight.
Believe me, anyone messes with you, or my hero Leonardo, or my hero Grace, or my hero Counterlight (have you seen his painting of Jesus among the dead? I tried to buy it, but I was too late!), or my hero IT, or my hero, David (have you heard his music? probably, since some of it's in your hymnal), or my hero Padre Wayne (and his toes, even more amazing than mine!)... All of you. You have all become my parish. Has to be that way because as a clergy's Quirky Other, I can't always let myself go on the way I can here. Yes, Obadiah, you too. You drive me crazy on a regular basis, perhaps, a holy occupation. Oh, Obadiah, did I tell you—I need your help too. Well, see, they need a school in Central Tanganyika. I'm not even sure how to spell it--but they need a school, so that's that. Katharine gave me contacts to start. I've got a knot in my stomach thinking about taking this on. That's an appropriate response, right? But I’m going to make the calls and start putting together a way to do this. I’ll keep you posted.
Katharine was easy to be with. She’s just my sister. She’s just another person at the table. She’s just this person who I happened to run into at a clergy conference—the way we run into people on busses or at coffee hours or in the draperies section of Bed Bath and Beyond strangers and wayfarers who suddenly say something that changes how we think and perhaps change the direction of our lives.
She just happened to say, “Build a school in Central Tanganyika.”
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Thanks, Harry.
So, it sounds like we're building a school in Central Tanganyika? Ok, then. Let's get to it.
J.
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I had dinner with the Presiding Bishop Katharine and her husband Richard last night. Wayne and I had come to Mackinac Island (pronounce it Mack-in-awe and you will sound like you’ve been here before) to attend an every-two-years clergy conference that is sponsored by the generous owners of the Hotel—one of the old grand hotels that is actually called Grand Hotel. Note bene: it is Grand Hotel and not The Grand Hotel. The hotel owners give the clergy a chance to stay here for three days of conference for almost nothing. It is generous in the extreme.
I’ll be honest with you. It’s not my favorite kind of thing to do. I love spending time with church people but I don’t particularly like them just because they are church people. I love spending time with clergy, and with their spouses/partners/husbands/wives. But I only like it so much. I found the conference difficult to navigate. Too many people telling you how everything in their parishes is going absolutely great. Everyone asks you at every possible chance if you’ve attended the Mackinac Island conference before and when you say ‘no’they all respond ‘Isn’t it the best thing possible?’ And of course it is in many ways, except the luncheon buffet served on tables twenty feet long and with so many people traveling up and down either side of them that you feel you are doing a Virginia Reel with a very angry rugby team. And of course, everyone has to really really like the liturgies or really really hate them and it’s a lot of energy to decide which. Oh yes, and there was that horrible moment when I inadvertently called a rector friend’s wife Whore of Babylon. But that story is for another day. (It only took fifteen minutes of explaining a long and complex thought process that was meant to demonstrate how the parish could perceive her in a different situation as…oh, not now. Maybe someday. When we parted company later in the day I apologized again and she said, “Actually, it’s of fun. Nobody’s ever called me the Whore of Babylon before.” Note to Wayne: do think twice before taking me to these events.)
Many, many clergy do not have a notion of how to take care of themselves—to indulge themselves in any way—and that is, really, the purpose of the conference. But for me? Well, there’s the thing about spending two or three days a year pretending like you’re a little more upper class than you are—I guess my old 60s informing rears its little ugly head. Quick, throw it another crab and lobster fritter… And my West Virginia mountain sensibility doesn’t mind style and class, it just doesn’t like the idea that you can take a bunch of ministers and pass them off as the Astors on the Titanic. It’s the reason I could never, ever get married (or blessed or not-blessed) in an Edwardian-style morning coat. To me that would be pretending that getting married somehow made me, for a day, upper crust and English. To me, the One Unforgivable Sin Against the Spirit may well be Anglophilia.
But, really—this unease with opulence in this form is what one sister calls, as she rolls her eyes, a luxury problem. The kind of problem anyone can afford to have. The kind of problem, ultimately, that isn’t a problem. The kind of problem that we all should be so lucky to have.
At check in: a raffle for the Episcopal Relief Fund—five dollars for a chance to have dinner with Her Nibs and, as he described himself to me, the Presiding Bishop Consort. I would never have entered merely for the chance to have dinner with her. I doubt I would have dropped my name into the basket if there was not a transfer of money to ministry by so doing. But I do put money in the Ronald MacDonald House collection containers—for kids with life-threatening illness. On the RARE OH SO VERY RARE occasions I buy something in MacDonald’s. And so with the dinner raffle. I was quite surprised when some lovely friends of mine won the raffle on the first night, and more surprised when I won it on the second night.
Your mind does race a bit. Is there anything you want to ask? Is there anything you want to tell? Well, yes—many things.
One thing I really wanted to ask her is how to get over the nightmares engendered by having seen a film, a year ago, called “3D Under The Sea” in an Imax theater. I am not in the least kidding when I say that this phantasmagoria of undersea creatures eating other undersea creatures in lurid, gargantuan projection sent me into a tailspin. I do not-absolutely do not-read the line from the psalm about ‘praise the lord all you sea-monsters under the sea’ the same since. Trust me, eating each other variously and sundily does not seem to me to be the same thing as praising the Lord, but then—our views are in some wise always parochial, aren’t they?
Katharine looked at me like I probably didn’t really ever get out of the house much.
“Well, I mostly only saw them in formaldehyde.”
Ah, I know better than to prepare conversation openers. They always go like this.
There were eight of us who got to share the table with Katharine and her husband, and dinner was set up so that you would basically talk to one for half the meal and then they would switch places and you would talk to the other.
I sat beside Katharine for the first half of the meal and across the long, narrow table from Richard, her husband. First, of course, the introductions.
This is something incredibly tricky when you come to dinner with the love of your life, and he’s not your husband nor you his. Earlier in the day Katharine had introduced Richard to the crowd as her ‘partner.’ She later told us that he had objected somewhat for fear that people might think they were unmarried. Of course, everything Katherine says is torn apart by people who like doing that sort of thing, so hisconcern was reasonable. But there was an impassioned and almost tearful complaint from the floor during questions about how this liberal stance was making it so difficult for people to live into the fullness of traditional marriage. (I’d definitely call that a luxury problem.)
But there I am trying to introduce Wayne. Husband? No. Spouse? No, because that generally implies marriage—it’s roots being, I believe, having to do with betrothal and marriage. Partner? Not after the problems it had created earlier in the day. So I introduced Wayne as the Love of My Life.
Now—our name tags did not identify us as clergy or paramours or anything of the sort. So the dynamic was fun throughout the conference. If I started introductions people would assume I was the Priest. I was, of course, merely the Love of the Priest’s Life. I have to say, everyone looked uncomfortable with my introducing Wayne as such. But herein is the problem of no rites and no names but full dignity. In the end all we have—is dignity, which just simmers in the rising afternoon heat without a “local habitation or a name.”
Mind you—it wasn’t the first time during the day that people had looked at me a bit askance. Earlier in the day we had meditated on the idea that we are the Lord’s beloved in whom he is well pleased. We shut our eyes for a full five minutes and thought about it. That, perhaps, was the best time at the conference. Just asking a huge room full of clergy and the Loves of Their Lives to shut up for five minutes is, to my mind, about the equivalent of moving the mountain to Mohammed. All I could think about were my toes.
Katharine asked us to talk to the people around us about what we had thought about. There were four others sitting near us, two other couples. No one spoke. And I thought, “Well, it won’t take me long.” And so I said, “I thought about my toes.” And four heads strained the necks underneath them into a head-moved-back-now position.
“Your toes?”
I try, when it’s quiet time, to notice what’s going on in my body. And because, I think, I had been wearing new shoes and my feet hurt, I was noticing how my feet felt and suddenly I thought of how strange toes are. Feet-fingers as the French call them.
“Well, yes. I think of my hands and I think, of course, how they can do work—and we ask often to let our hands do God’s work in the world. But toes? They seem completely extravagant! And that made me think I must be pleasing to God, or why would he have given ten of them to me? Ten! Extraordinary.”
And there it was again. The silence. Not really distressed or shocked or offended. Just more like “Huh?” silence. Oh well, I’m used to it. And I guess forgetting over and over that things I say can at any time produce this look of gentle wariness is just—well, a luxury problem.
Nonetheless, I had had a lovely day walking around with my toes, indisputable evidence that God is well pleased with me. They are the sort of gift only a sweetheart can give you—something so dear and utterly silly, like when one half of a couple has a thing about cute little pigs and the other loves them and wants to express it over and over until the house is full of statues of pigs flipping flapjacks, pictures of Poker Playing Pigs, pigs dressed like Elizabeth the First, little filigree pigs jumping over little filigree moons. Ten of them toes, I mean! One understands ten fingers of course, because how else could you open the peanut butter jar, spread the peanut butter (which involves picking up a knife), and eat the sandwich with any delicacy? But ten toes? They are as silly as Little Piggies Going to Market. And, while fingers can be elegant, it is a rare toe that achieves the heights of holy sensuousness. Mine, at any rate, are only as strangely appealing as the wonderful gift your beloved Cat Geoffrey brings you, the sweetest gift anyone could ever bring anyone: a freshly killed, mangled mole there at the bottom of the bed delivered with fierce pride and undying devotion.
And there I am. At dinner with the Presiding Bishop and her husband. And my ten toes. In no time at all we were crying.
I don’t know exactly why or how—but it is rare for me to sit down with anyone in the world and not find, within a few minutes, that this person is a distant cousin. Or someone I’ve just met will tell me something quite surprising that they haven’t told Wayne even though they were his friends first and have known him for years and years. (Earlier in the day the ‘partner’ of another priest had told me that years ago he had been the best man at his ‘partner’s wedding’—you do the math. Note bene: in the hope of being married properly some day, don’t forget that marriages can be as messy as anything, and sometimes far worse than not being married, even to someone you believe for a time to be the love of your life.) Or, out of the blue, we are talking about something deeply personal—sometimes painful—and this is what happened with Richard and me.
I had sworn to myself that I was not going to bring up the fact that myfather had died when I was seven, that he had crashed his one-engine Cessna out west, in Utah. But, like Paul, I do the thing I would not do. And Richard was telling me about a college friend of his (who turned out to be someone I knew quite well out in San Francisco) who could trace his own being gay to when he was six years old. And I related a story how my father had refused to do more ‘boy’ things with me when I was four even though my mother kept insisting, since she was afraid my “latent tendencies” might become problematic later. My father had ended the matter by saying playing ball and such would be phoney for us and it might do better to figure out how to get know the person I was getting ready to be. And then he asked about my father. Later. When I came out of the closet, how did my father take it. And I said, “Well, he died when I was seven.”
It turns out Katharine’s mother died after crashing her plane on Bainbridge Island. She didn’t die immediately like my father did. It took years. Katharine’s mother had many painful injuries, and intractable epilepsy. And as Richard related details of all this, he cried. And I realized that it was the first time in my entire life that I had told the story of my father dying in a plane crash and had someone respond in kind. Someone asked me later if it had been a healing moment. I’m not sure I know what that is. I would call it a sensible moment. We ought to stop, even in the middle of extravagant dinners, and cry a bit for the people we have loved and lost.
Katharine turned and asked her husband if he was okay. The way partners do. Half with a look and half with half a question. “Are you…”
And he said, “Harry’s father died in…crashed his plane…a single-engine Cessna. And I was telling him about your mother.”
And she just turned to me and looked at me wondering.
“I love thinking of him in his plane,” I said. “Just as I love thinking of my Presiding Bishop in hers. It doesn’t make me sad at all. I feel close to him when I think of him in the plane—I grew up in that plane. I have no way to think of him in heaven. I think of him in the plane. How happy he always was and how proud I was of him.”
Later, after she and Richard would switch places she would ask me to tell her more about my father. “You were only seven?”
“Yes, but here is the thing. I had this incredible conversation with him the night before he died. I’d had a fight with my sister, Alexis, and mom had sent us to our rooms and then in a bit he’d come around to see how we were doing—it was never a ‘wait till your father hears about this’ kind of thing. We would look forward to our father coming around, because he really liked kids and really knew how to talk to us.
I’d found out a couple of days before, by the way, during a visit from an uncle I hadn’t seen in 25 years that my father had liberated camps in Germany at the end of the war. I hadn’t known that—although I remember being six, and an old couple had come to our house for dinner and showed me the tattoos on their arms and said that once my father had helped them. I had no idea what they were talking about, but only a sense—a stillness really, as if everything in the world had stopped—a sense that I should listen. There was an assumption that I understood the tattoos, which I didn’t, not in their full sense. But I knew that they were showing them to me because I needed to know, even at each six, that something had been done to them that was unimaginable. And I can still see, in my mind’s eye, the exact gestures of their arms reaching out and turning to reveal the numbers. We humans have to count everything, number everything—even verses of scripture (does no one wonder what the cumulative effect of reading scripture stuffed with numbers is?). Even each other.
Father and I had agreed that I needed to apologize, and that had led to metaphysical topics that often accompany discussions about reconciliation —and I had asked ‘What are heaven and hell like?’
“And he said—Katharine, as amazing as this is, it’s absolutely true—he said, ‘Well, you know. If you have a fight with your sister and then go out and get run over by a car and die, there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s hell. But if you apologize, and make up with her, and the two of you feel happy about each other, and then a car hits you and you die—you don’t ever have to worry about whether or not you did the right thing and if she knew you really loved her. That’s heaven.’
“These were the last words my father shared with me.” And then I felt a tear fall from my cheek into my Mushroom Paté en Croute.
And I decided I wanted to share Nigerian stories. They are nearly impossible to share here because the essence of them is how joyfully I get to reproduce the musical tones, almost always of shock and surprise and delight, of almost every exchange I’ve had with a Nigerian.
When I shared the story of the Nigerian woman at my church doing laundry who said to a parishioner helping her, a woman who’d had quite a difficult time when Wayne and I came to the parish—when the Nigerian woman said (and please, you must imagine that each word said in this statement is like a brightly colored ball tossed into the air with musical abandon), “I do not see HOW you Anglicans can let these HOMOSEXUALS into your church this way. It is a TERRIBLE business.” And how the parishioner said…well…yes, a year ago she had thought so too. And Katharine laughed. Whether at my willingness to speak in such an unclergy-like way at the dinner table or at my delight in the Nigerian woman, I don’t know.
I asked her, “When you were at the meeting of the Primates, were you scared?”
“Well, what do you mean by scared?”
“Could you sleep at night.”
She smiled and said, “No. A couple of nights were really hard.”
I said, “Thank you for being willing to not be able to sleep for us.”
I asked her about meeting with the House of Bishops. She laughed and said it was much, much easier and that it really did feel like everyone was working on solutions not on stances and positions. And I really do believe her.
Toward the end of my conversation with her I said, “Katharine, I’m a mature Christian. I’ve been about this for awhile, and I don’t need anything from the House of Bishops, the Primates, or my Rector—who does, by the way, turn out to be the Love of My Life. I’d like, at this point, for you to give me a charge, during this time of ‘fasting,’ to take away from this table. I want something to call my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to do with me that has absolutely nothing to do with the Windsor Report.”
She looked at me quizzically for moment and then said, “Build a school in Central Tanganyika.”
She really heard my question and she really answered it.
I need help from all of you. Maybe moral support. Maybe a lot of money. Maybe fund raising. Maybe doing paper work. I don't know anything about building a school. I want gay and lesbian people and their friends to work on this, but I don't want it to be a gay and lesbian project. I want us to have an experience of being mission Christians without needing anything back from it at all. Including not needing the project to advance our cause. Perhaps it will, perhaps it won't. I turn that over to my Lord and Savior. I have a school to build. It seems almost crazy to be thinking I can do this-- but it isn't any crazier, really, when you think about it, than having toes.
I rarely, rarely, rarely pray for specific things. But I’ve been praying for awhile that I might suddenly have an idea of what I really need to be doing. Regardless of whether or not that prayer and Katharine’s sudden, extravagant urging are related—I have decided to do it.
I remember a story from my sister Alexis’s work in film. She was doing a Kevin Costner movie—she does makeup and hair—and they were filming in Hawaii where they’d flown Amazonian Yanomami people from the Amazon in, many of whom had never seen a movie, to be extras. And my sister told me that she had heard a conversation between two of the men. They had just realized how much money their paltry paychecks came to. And one shouted in joy, “We can build a school!” The first thing they thought of upon understanding that they were getting money was a school.
I have to tell you that while I completely understand the pain and confusion that all of us feel over the Windsor Report, etc., and the concomitant fracas—I cannot dwell long in that conflict. I was distressed at the conference when priests would stand at the microphone and cry—with real pain, of course—in response to the recent report from the House of Bishops. I heard one priest tell the Bishop of Eastern Michigan that after reading the report she had seriously thought of renouncing her priestly orders.
We, as mature Christians, are as innocent as doves and cunning as serpents. That means we cry for others, not for ourselves. We, ourselves, do not lose heart. Because we know the secret inner workings of things, that inspire and inform our relationships and love, and sweeten the sounds of children shouting and laughing in the city schoolyard, and make trees tall and give the great Buzzing to beetles. And what about glass being transparent! How stunning is that? And of course: toes.
Blessing our unions? Yes, of course. It has to happen sooner or later because sooner or later people are going to want their parish friends (and Rectors!) not to be living in sexual relationships with people they aren’t married to.
But for me, today—the important question isn’t whether the church will bless what God has already blessed. But how do I wake up and into the brilliant light of my love for the love of my life and carry that into the world which I am in—but not of. We ought to work this sort of thing out as gay and lesbian Christians. If we cry, we need to cry for those who are young in faith. We have known the deal all along. I’m not saying I’m not ready to get out and demonstrate. I’m not saying I’m willing to accept the Bishops’ or Primates’ reports or mandates. But I am saying, and really believe, that being a Christian, and Anglican, and Episcopalian, and a Holy Fool is about realizing that grace has bound you to your traditions, to authority in the Episcopal church, to numbing ambiguity, and above all to the idea that the greatest of these (being faith, hope and charity and everything that is, seen and unseen) is charity.
Run the good race, we must. Stand up for ourselves when people say horrible and bigoted things. Make safe places for everyone in the church. Celebrate the ways in which we, as gay people, are not like heterosexual people and the ways in which heterosexual people are not like us. These kinds of differences are indeed causes for joy, just as toes are. So many extravagant gifts from our maker.
I do not deny grief. I just try to notice when it takes me from being in the world to being of the world. And, oh my God, the last thing I mean to do here is treat anyone with any lack of consideration for pain in the process of bringing the church, the communion and the world to conscious fairness and charity with respect to me as a gay person and all of you as the sometimes eccentric sometimes heretical people you may or may not be, gay or straight.
Believe me, anyone messes with you, or my hero Leonardo, or my hero Grace, or my hero Counterlight (have you seen his painting of Jesus among the dead? I tried to buy it, but I was too late!), or my hero IT, or my hero, David (have you heard his music? probably, since some of it's in your hymnal), or my hero Padre Wayne (and his toes, even more amazing than mine!)... All of you. You have all become my parish. Has to be that way because as a clergy's Quirky Other, I can't always let myself go on the way I can here. Yes, Obadiah, you too. You drive me crazy on a regular basis, perhaps, a holy occupation. Oh, Obadiah, did I tell you—I need your help too. Well, see, they need a school in Central Tanganyika. I'm not even sure how to spell it--but they need a school, so that's that. Katharine gave me contacts to start. I've got a knot in my stomach thinking about taking this on. That's an appropriate response, right? But I’m going to make the calls and start putting together a way to do this. I’ll keep you posted.
Katharine was easy to be with. She’s just my sister. She’s just another person at the table. She’s just this person who I happened to run into at a clergy conference—the way we run into people on busses or at coffee hours or in the draperies section of Bed Bath and Beyond strangers and wayfarers who suddenly say something that changes how we think and perhaps change the direction of our lives.
She just happened to say, “Build a school in Central Tanganyika.”
__________________________________________________
Thanks, Harry.
So, it sounds like we're building a school in Central Tanganyika? Ok, then. Let's get to it.
J.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Commemoration of St. Francis of Assisi
Here's a meditation provided by Bob Carlton:
Here's the lyrics of the song:
My favorite story (legend?) about Francis is when the Bishop of Assisi finally dragged Francis before the Pope, so that Francis could ask permission to start a new order.
So there is Francis, barefoot and filthy, standing before the Pope, arrayed in all his finery. The Pope asked, "Tell me, Francis, why I should grant your request to start a new religious order."
Francis replied, "You Holiness, I am not a man of words. I cannot tell you. But I can show you."
And then he danced before the Pope.
He received permission to start a new order.
Let us pray,
Most high, omnipotent, good Lord, grant your people grace to renounce gladly the vanities of this world; that, following the way of blessed Francis, we may for love of you delight in your whole creation with perfectness of joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, on God, for ever and ever. Amen.
J.
Here's the lyrics of the song:
and the problem is this: we were bought with a kiss,Thanks, Bob.
but the cheek still turned, even when it wasn’t hit.
and i don’t know what to do with a love like that
and i don’t know how to be a love like that
when all the love in the world is right here among us
and hatred too, and so we must choose what our hands will do
where there is pain, let there be grace.
where there is suffering, bring serenity.
for those afraid, help them be brave.
where there is misery, bring expectancy.
and surely we can change something.
and the problem it seems is with you and me,
not the Love who came to repair everything
and i don’t know what to do with a love like that.
and i don’t know how to be a love like that.
when all the love in the world is right here, among us.
and hatred too and so we must choose what our hands will do.
where there is pain, let us bring grace.
where there is suffering, bring serenity.
for those afraid, let us be brave.
where there is misery, let us bring them relief.
and surely we can change something.
-David Crowder*Band, Surely We Can Change, Remedy (2007)
My favorite story (legend?) about Francis is when the Bishop of Assisi finally dragged Francis before the Pope, so that Francis could ask permission to start a new order.
So there is Francis, barefoot and filthy, standing before the Pope, arrayed in all his finery. The Pope asked, "Tell me, Francis, why I should grant your request to start a new religious order."
Francis replied, "You Holiness, I am not a man of words. I cannot tell you. But I can show you."
And then he danced before the Pope.
He received permission to start a new order.
Let us pray,
Most high, omnipotent, good Lord, grant your people grace to renounce gladly the vanities of this world; that, following the way of blessed Francis, we may for love of you delight in your whole creation with perfectness of joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, on God, for ever and ever. Amen.
J.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
The Report from the Joint Standing Committee
The Lead brings us the report. The full report, including footnotes, can be found here. Here are a few of the most noteworthy quotes:
Regarding blessings:
J.
Regarding blessings:
...These statements (Summary and Discussion), taken together, address the request of the Primates at Dar es Salaam. The bishops have pledged themselves not to authorise public rites in their dioceses. In giving this commitment with the proviso “or until General Convention takes further action”, the House of Bishops is acknowledging that it does not have the power to bind future actions of General Convention, in the same way that most of the general synods of the Provinces of the Anglican Communion cannot be bound by any part or section of their polity...On the election of bishops:
...It needs to be made clear however that we believe that the celebration of a public liturgy which includes a blessing on a same-sex union is not within the breadth of private pastoral response envisaged by the Primates in their Pastoral Letter of 2003, and that the undertaking made by the bishops in New Orleans is understood to mean that the use of any such rites or liturgies will not in future have the bishop’s authority “until a broader consensus emerges in the Communion, or until General Convention takes further action ”, a qualification which is in line with the limits that the Constitution of The Episcopal Church places upon the bishops.
On this basis, we understand the statement of the House of Bishops in New Orleans to have met the request of the Windsor Report in that the Bishops have declared “a moratorium on all such public Rites” , and the request of the Primates at Dar es Salaam that the bishops should “make an unequivocal common covenant that the bishops will not authorise any Rite of Blessing for same-sex unions in their dioceses” since we have their pledge explicitly in those terms...
...By confirming the interpretation of the Communion Sub-Group and quoting it explicitly, as well as making the explicit acknowledgement in the last sentence of their text that Resolution B033 does refer to “non-celibate gay and lesbian persons”, the Episcopal House of Bishops is answering the question of the Primates positively. They confirm the understanding of the sub-group that restraint is exercised in a precise way “by not consenting”, and that this specifically includes “non-celibate gay and lesbian persons”. They have therefore clearly affirmed that the Communion Sub-Group were correct in interpreting Resolution B033 as meeting the request of the Windsor Report...Conclusion:
...By their answers to these two questions, we believe that the Episcopal Church has clarified all outstanding questions relating to their response to the questions directed explicitly to them in the Windsor Report, and on which clarifications were sought by 30th September 2007, and given the necessary assurances sought of them...Regarding pastoral care for dissenting congregations:
Unless some measure of reassurance and security is given to those congregations, parishes, bishops and dioceses who are feeling an increasing sense of alienation from The Episcopal Church, there will be no reconciliation either within The Episcopal Church or within the wider Anglican Communion. We are also mindful of the increasing levels of litigation within The Episcopal Church and of the call of the primates at Dar es Salaam to bring an end to such litigation...Regarding incursions by uninvited bishops:
...We are dismayed as a Joint Standing Committee by the continuing use of the law courts in this situation, and request that the Archbishop of Canterbury use his influence to persuade parties to discontinue actions in law on the basis set out in the primates’ Communiqué...
...As a Joint Standing Committee, we do not see how certain primates can in good conscience call upon The Episcopal Church to meet the recommendations of the Windsor Report while they find reasons to exempt themselves from paying regard to them. We recommend that the Archbishop remind them of their own words and undertakings...Conclusion:
...In early 2000, the Provinces of Rwanda and South East Asia proceeded to the ordination of three bishops for a “mission initiative” known as the “Anglican Mission in America” in the United States. At the time, the 103rd Archbishop of Canterbury wrote to the consecrating bishops and expressed the opinion that he could not regard the bishops then consecrated as “bishops of the Anglican Communion.” At the subsequent meeting of the Primates in Oporto in March 2000, the primates stated that “The Archbishop of Canterbury's letter of 17th February 2000 to the bishops of the Communion expresses a view that is endorsed by this meeting. We are grateful for this clear and decisive response. ” Archbishop George Carey had written: “I cannot recognise their episcopal ministry until such time as a full rapprochement and reconciliation has taken place between them and the appropriate authorities within the Episcopal Church of the United States. ”
The current instances of consecrations which have been taking place in African Provinces with respect to “missionary initiatives” in North America would seem to fall into the same category. We understand that, in addition to contravening the authorities quoted above , the consecrations took place either without consultation with or even against the counsel of the Archbishop of Canterbury...
...The life of the Anglican Communion has been much damaged in recent years following the tensions raised by the consecration in The Episcopal Church of a bishop living in a committed same-sex relationship and the authorisation in some dioceses of Rites of Blessing for same-sex unions. With the response of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church in September 2007, the Communion should move towards closure on these matters, at least for the time being. The Communion seems to be converging around a position which says that while it is inappropriate to proceed to public Rites of Blessing of same-sex unions and to the consecration of bishops who are living in sexual relationships outside of Christian marriage , we need to take seriously our ministry to gay and lesbian people inside the Church and the ending of discrimination, persecution and violence against them. Here, The Episcopal Church and the Instruments of Communion speak with one voice. The process of mutual listening and conversation needs to be intensified. It is only by living in communion that we can live out our vocation to be Communion...So, there it is. Please read the whole document, and then maybe read it a second time, before responding.
J.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
The African Anglican Hierarchy Should Repent
From L. Muthoni Wanyeki, the executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission:
What is most disturbing is that even after it was pointed out that such language might be misunderstood as sanctioning hate crimes, the manager not only refused to remove the troubling comments, but continued to make further derogatory statements.
For the record, this manager may very well be one singularly disturbed person. I am not suggesting that he is representative of most ultra-conservative Anglicans in North America. The responsible reaction would have been to simply remove the questionable comments, rather than the childish rant about sissies and "men being men" offered by the manager of the site.
Honorable men and women admit their mistakes and then do what they can to correct them. When someone who claims to speak for the Church in Africa, or a parachurch organization in North America, sanctions such ugly rhetoric, they share the responsibility for the hate crimes that may result. They should step up and do the right thing; admit their error and show true repentance for their actions.
J.
The American Episcopal church has backed down to preserve the unity of the Anglican family worldwide. It has promised to exercise restraint with respect to the ordination of any more gay or lesbian bishops. And it has promised no longer to authorise the use of rites to bless same-sex marriages.Unfortunately, those who sanction such hate crimes are not limited to Africa, as we have recently seen in this conversation. The manager of the linked site made the following statements, in which his intended target was a certain "collection of whiny, effeminate bedwetters," which is his colorful description of the House of Bishops:
African Anglican bishops are, for the most part, celebrating. As far as they are concerned, they have won a major victory regarding interpretation of religious texts relating to homosexuality. Kenya’s archbishop has gone so far as to say that the capitulation is not enough — he is demanding no less than full “repentance.”
My personal opinion, for what it is worth, is that the African Anglican hierarchy itself has something to repent. It has proceeded as though African gay men and lesbians do not exist, even though some are also members of its flock. It has endorsed the prejudice and stereotypes about African gay men and lesbians — namely that they are both “unAfrican” and “unholy.”
At the worst end of the scale, consider this. On July 7 this year, two black South African lesbians were executed in Soweto. It is believed that they were followed home after a party. They were removed from their car, taken to a field and gang-raped before being executed.
Their deaths were not isolated. Another woman, also known to be a lesbian, was killed in Cape Town around the same time. And, in line with the ignorant idea that lesbians can be “fixed,” over 10 women known to be lesbians were raped. An atmosphere of fear has been created.
That is South Africa. Closer to home, the Tanzanian Lesbian Association has had to help relocate two lesbians following the publication of a picture of them kissing under the banner: “Uchafu”...
...Prejudice and stereotypes both cause and enable systemic discrimination. When they are “sanctioned” by those considered to be authorities, the logical outcome is the kind of hate crimes now being witnessed in South Africa...
...What the African Anglican bishops have essentially said is that African citizens are “right” in their prejudices and stereotypes about African gay communities. It is thus the African Anglican hierarchy that should “repent.” If we do not stop and check ourselves, we can rest assured that the damage ultimately caused will not just be to the Anglican family worldwide. The damage will be to our own.
...I’m already reaching for my pistol...“reachin’ for my pistol” is an old expression I use around here. No threat is being made...but they shouldn’t find fault with those who want to pick up their sword...This "no threat" threat was then dismissed as "humor," with few finding fault in the manager's choice of words.
What is most disturbing is that even after it was pointed out that such language might be misunderstood as sanctioning hate crimes, the manager not only refused to remove the troubling comments, but continued to make further derogatory statements.
For the record, this manager may very well be one singularly disturbed person. I am not suggesting that he is representative of most ultra-conservative Anglicans in North America. The responsible reaction would have been to simply remove the questionable comments, rather than the childish rant about sissies and "men being men" offered by the manager of the site.
Honorable men and women admit their mistakes and then do what they can to correct them. When someone who claims to speak for the Church in Africa, or a parachurch organization in North America, sanctions such ugly rhetoric, they share the responsibility for the hate crimes that may result. They should step up and do the right thing; admit their error and show true repentance for their actions.
J.
Monday, October 01, 2007
Exporting Schism
Since the schism in North America is being heralded as a great success, having gained the allegiance of 5 diocesan bishops (out of 110) and 60 congregations (out of 7,600), it appears that the same tactics will now be exported to England.
From the Telegraph:
Reform is now denying that they made any such threat to Canterbury. However, their recent statement regarding the New Orleans House of Bishops meeting echoes much of what is reported in the Telegraph:
If it works in America, England will be next. And then New Zealand, perhaps? Or maybe Mexico? No doubt those who will be pushing such schisms will call on the assistance of a few "pistol packing" Texans to make sure the job gets done right. The Primates need to be aware that this schism is turning ugly, and there are those who are actively working to export it into their backyards.
J.
From the Telegraph:
...Reform also says it will bring in foreign archbishops to ordain priests in dioceses where incumbent bishops refuse to disassociate themselves from the American church, which appointed the openly homosexual Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003...Reform is a group that describes itself as "a network of churches and individuals within the Church of England, committed to the reform of ourselves, our congregation and our world by the gospel." Their "reform" seems to be primarily about getting rid of the gays.
...The Rev Rod Thomas, the chairman elect of Reform, said: "The situation in the Anglican communion is so serious now that we have to plan for an inevitable split in the Church of England from top to bottom"...
Reform is now denying that they made any such threat to Canterbury. However, their recent statement regarding the New Orleans House of Bishops meeting echoes much of what is reported in the Telegraph:
...We are facing an eleventh-hour crisis in the Anglican Communion; any suggestion that further discussion is the way forward is a failure to realise the imminence of the threat we face. What is needed now is firm, decisive leadership which clearly protects and promotes the Biblical Christian faith. It is around such a position that the Communion could unite. In practice this means that discipline should be applied to TEC. Any bishops involved in the consecration of Gene Robinson or who teach that such consecrations are acceptable should be dis-invited from the Lambeth 2008 conference.Those Primates who might be considering allowing "alternative jurisdictions" within the boundaries of the Episcopal Church may want to note this development.
Without such discipline, we fear that divisions within the Anglican Communion will become permanent, with very grave consequences for the Church of England herself. Many in the mainstream of the Church’s life will want to align themselves with orthodox believers and distance themselves from TEC. This will entail a review, and suspension of, current diocesan links with TEC. Where dioceses are unwilling to suspend such links, orthodox clergy and parishes will remain committed to the Church of England, but will find the case for seeking alternative forms of spiritual oversight increasingly attractive and in many cases overwhelming.
If it works in America, England will be next. And then New Zealand, perhaps? Or maybe Mexico? No doubt those who will be pushing such schisms will call on the assistance of a few "pistol packing" Texans to make sure the job gets done right. The Primates need to be aware that this schism is turning ugly, and there are those who are actively working to export it into their backyards.
J.
Presiding Bishop: "No Retreat"
From SFGate:
J.
On Sunday - the deadline set by church leaders for the Episcopal Church to roll back support for same-sex unions - the U.S. church's presiding bishop spoke unequivocally at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral that there would be no retreat.Episcopal Life offers a report on the same event at Grace Cathedral, which includes this:
"All people - including gay and lesbian Christians and non-Christians - are deserving of the fullest regard of the church," the Most Rev. Katherine Jefferts Schori declared during an hourlong discussion before services. "We're not going backward."
Jefferts Schori said these are the views of the church's bishops as well as of its lay members - who have increasingly affirmed rights for same-sex couples. As such, Jefferts Schori's comments served as the punctuation to a historic day...
...Many of those gathered Sunday applauded Jefferts Schori, saying they support her views and believe that the direction of the church will ultimately lead to full equality - having formal, authorized rites for same-sex unions.
But some view the current treatment of gays and lesbians as tantamount to second-class status.
Christopher Hayes, 40, of San Francisco said he and his partner of 13 years are in the planning stages of their same-sex union, a ceremony that will take place in Grace Cathedral. But he feels frustrated by the state of events.
"I want to hear that we're not satisfied with where we are right now," he said.
Jefferts Schori said the time is not right - yet - for such a moment.
While some conservatives may leave because of the church's views, she said others may be drawn to the fold.
"Decisions the church as a whole makes can open the door wider for people who have not been part of a faith tradition or this part of Christianity. ... The church always is changing."
...Asked by (Dean Alan) Jones to bring "a sense of proportion" to the current conflict, the Presiding Bishop cited reports that of the Episcopal Church's more than 7,600 congregations, some 45-60 of those have experienced votes by a majority of parishioners to affiliate with an overseas Anglican diocese. "That is well under 1 percent" of total congregations, and many of those continue in name and mission as Episcopal congregations within their dioceses, Jefferts Schori said.The Presiding Bishop's sermon at Grace can be found here.
Jones further reported that active diocesan bishops of some five of the Episcopal Church's 110 total dioceses participated in a September 25-28 "Common Cause Partnership" meeting in Pittsburgh seeking a realigned structure for Anglicanism in North America.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, meanwhile, has affirmed previously that he will not recognize in North America Anglican Provinces other than the U.S.-based Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Anglican Church of Mexico...
J.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Who is Worth Killing?
From Episcopal Life, regarding the recent Common Cause meeting:
Is my concern evidence of just being paranoid? I don't think so.
For instance, consider this conversation that occurred recently at Stand Firm, an ultra-conservative site that is managed by Greg Griffith. The responses were to some "notes" from Bob Maxwell of a clergy conference. Here is part of those "notes." "Jeffrey" is a reference to Bp. Steenson of Rio Grande, who recently announced his intention to resign:
Regarding the part about "having guns...so don't mess with our bishops," one can assume that this is a reference to the cliche "Don't mess with Texas." Most likely, it was an attempt at humor. But, in light of Bp. Duncan's recent homily, I think this was also a very poor choice of words. The comments that followed give evidence that it was indeed a poor choice. Here's just a few of them. Note that the most troubling comments were initiated by the manager of the site:
We need to say something loud and clear. Threats of violence are never to be tolerated among those who call themselves Christians. I can see no other interpretation of the conversation quoted above; a conversation that evolved shortly after discussions of Bp. Duncan's homily (which explains the "wouldn't waste a bullet" comment).
In your responses to these outrageous statements, please keep in mind that this is a Christian site. Further threats of violence are not the appropriate response. We stand up against such behavior that would seek to harm another. But we will not make new victims. Those with whom we struggle are also children of God, regardless of our personal opinions. Threats of violence against anyone separates us from the love of God made known to us through Jesus Christ.
For the sake of our own spiritual health, and for the sake of the world, let us speak out against violence, while also refusing to make new victims.
Pray for the Church.
J.
UPDATE: The manager of the site quoted above has responded. Here's part of it:
...During his short homily at Eucharist, (Bishop) Duncan urged the congregation of about 100 to be fruitful even if their fruit is not what the world wants, and to be willing to face the consequences of their actions. Those consequences in the past, Duncan said, have included death.Mark Harris found a further quote from Bp. Duncan's homily:
"My prayer for us who have gathered here is that...we will be such a threat to the present order that we will be found worth killing, if only Columba's white martyrdom, but, if it be so, let it be the red martyrdom," Duncan said, contrasting the "martyrdom" of asceticism with that of death...
...During his sermon in the cathedral, Duncan said that there hasn't been an Archbishop of Canterbury worth killing since 1645, citing Anglican historian Philip Jenkins...When viewed within the context of his entire homily, perhaps Bp. Duncan's comments about who is "worth killing" are actually quite benign. But I still think they were a poor choice of words, considering the volatile nature of the current situation. It is not a great leap to begin with speaking of killing and being killed as a metaphor for spiritual warfare and end up with acts of violence being threatened against those with whom you consider to be "evil."
Is my concern evidence of just being paranoid? I don't think so.
For instance, consider this conversation that occurred recently at Stand Firm, an ultra-conservative site that is managed by Greg Griffith. The responses were to some "notes" from Bob Maxwell of a clergy conference. Here is part of those "notes." "Jeffrey" is a reference to Bp. Steenson of Rio Grande, who recently announced his intention to resign:
...Third, two bishops threatened +Jeffrey, over this agreement with St. Clement. CO and I believe XX were the bishops. He was really upset by this –in tears and shaking- and it included deposition, law suits, not allowing him to resign. . . We were quite angry on hearing this and wondered if they realized they were talking to a NM – TX bishop. Their cities may have a lot of urban gang problems; but, they don’t realize most of us have guns, know how to use them and nobody’s gonna mess with our bishops!We don't know the full story behind these accusations of "threats" by two unnamed bishops, but if this is true, I think that we can all agree that such behavior is inappropriate for a bishop. I would hope that the bishops involved in this would offer Bp. Steenson an apology.
Regarding the part about "having guns...so don't mess with our bishops," one can assume that this is a reference to the cliche "Don't mess with Texas." Most likely, it was an attempt at humor. But, in light of Bp. Duncan's recent homily, I think this was also a very poor choice of words. The comments that followed give evidence that it was indeed a poor choice. Here's just a few of them. Note that the most troubling comments were initiated by the manager of the site:
The manager of one of the most popular ultra-conservative web sites read by many Anglicans is advocating for a place for those who want to "pick up their sword." Unbelievable.Greg Griffith: I’m already reaching for my pistol…
Anthony: Threatening in a blog to shoot people is serious. Just sayin’.
Greg Griffith: Anthony, Agreed. However, “reachin’ for my pistol” is an old expression I use around here. No threat is being made.
Charles Nightingale: Alisdair+: Perhaps it’s time for the “Small band of former paratroopers” to mobilize and deploy!
Virg: "they don’t realize most of us have guns, know how to use them and nobody’s gonna mess with our bishops!...”
At last… a perfect solution to all this bickering going on in the church. We’ll just kill the sobs. God help any dissenters on Fr. Maxwell’s vestry.the snarkster: "I’m already reaching for my pistol…"
Hey, what gives with this? The Commenatrix (Blessed be her name) got on my case for saying a lot less than that.
It should be quite evident to all by now that our Presiding Marine Biologist and all the 815 gang are not liken to a school of angelfish. They are sharks, pure and simple.Frances Scott: Frankly, Fr. Maxwell, I wouldn’t waste a bullet on her.
Greg Griffith: Of course, no one is threatening anyone with anything here. I’ll caution anyone pondering a real threat to read our comment policy, but I’ll also remind those who think we’re under orders to keep everything here cupcakes and bunny rabbits not to fall for the caricature of Jesus that our Worthy Opponents have tried to sell us… how was it put the other day? - A sort of zoned-out hippie pacifist, wandering from town to town, spouting Zen koans and harmless parables?
Let’s not forget that the people in these churches have in many cases put their life’s work into them; that their parents and grandparents are buried in the graveyard; it’s where their children were baptized, confirmed and married; and that the people we’re up against are nasty - there’s no other way to say it - and they’re playing for keeps.
I won’t criticize those who think the best course is to play the pacifist, but they shouldn’t find fault with those who want to pick up their sword along with their trowel (emphasis added).
We need to say something loud and clear. Threats of violence are never to be tolerated among those who call themselves Christians. I can see no other interpretation of the conversation quoted above; a conversation that evolved shortly after discussions of Bp. Duncan's homily (which explains the "wouldn't waste a bullet" comment).
In your responses to these outrageous statements, please keep in mind that this is a Christian site. Further threats of violence are not the appropriate response. We stand up against such behavior that would seek to harm another. But we will not make new victims. Those with whom we struggle are also children of God, regardless of our personal opinions. Threats of violence against anyone separates us from the love of God made known to us through Jesus Christ.
For the sake of our own spiritual health, and for the sake of the world, let us speak out against violence, while also refusing to make new victims.
Pray for the Church.
J.
UPDATE: The manager of the site quoted above has responded. Here's part of it:
...I refuse to conform my posts to the delicate sensibilities of Jake and his gals. This will always be a place where men can feel free to be men… the kind of place our church used to be, once upon a time...
Blessings Abound Throughout the Anglican Communion
From Kevin Holdsworth, Provost of St. Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow, Scotland:
What examples have you seen of blessings being offered in other parts of the Communion? If you provide a link, I'll add them to the above list.
J.
...Today I celebrated a Eucharist in circumstances which were new to me but which felt old and traditional all the same. A new addition to the range of things that human beings have wanted to mark with the sharing of the bread of heaven and the wine of new life. Today it was in celebration of a Civil Partnership between two people whom I have come to know through my work.From St. Matthews, Auckland, New Zealand:
Duncan wrote last week of his sense of holiness in being with a couple as they vow to be with one another for life. I know that feeling well, yet every time it surprises me just a little. The most intimate of moments a couple ever have, but shared with their families and friends and in the awesome presence of the living God. Today was no different.
As I helped the two men through their vows and then served communion to them and their friends in thanksgiving, I knew the Eucharist of old. And I knew the Eucharist afresh. I know Christ at that meal every time. Today it was knowing him holding the beloved disciple in his arms as he shared with his friends on his last night and as he has done at every Eucharist since.
People like me have been waiting for services like the one I celebrated today for so long.
Christ the beloved one has been waiting much longer.
Same-sex couples are welcome at St Matthew's. The clergy at St Matthew-in-the-City will assist you in planning and holding a blessing of your same-sex union. We are delighted when any couple wishes to pledge their love, trust, and fidelity to each other before God and in the presence of their friends and family.From the Diocese of New Westminster, Canada:
...We emphasize that we in this diocese continue to do our work of community outreach and care for our parishioners. The blessing of same sex couples is one part of that. The blessing is a way that some priests use to ensure that homosexual people who seek to be included in the Anglican Communion feel safe and respected.From Resolution C051 of the 2003 General Convention of the Episcopal Church:
...4. That we reaffirm Resolution D039 of the 73rd General Convention (2000), that “We expect such relationships will be characterized by fidelity, monogamy, mutual affection and respect, careful, honest communication, and the holy love which enables those in such relationships to see in each other the image of God,” and that such relationships exist throughout the church.As you can see, this is not a matter of "The Episcopal Church against the World" as it is often depicted by the ultra-conservatives and often in the media. I think it is time for this misconception to be corrected.
5. That we recognize that local faith communities are operating within the bounds of our common life as they explore and experience liturgies celebrating and blessing same-sex unions...
What examples have you seen of blessings being offered in other parts of the Communion? If you provide a link, I'll add them to the above list.
J.
Friday, September 28, 2007
The Schism is Official; Time to Clean Up the Mess and Move On
It appears that the final scene of the attempted coup by the ultra-conservatives has finally commenced. From the Network:
Of particular interest is that I would imagine that this "declaration" was also signed by at least four bishops who are still members of the Episcopal Church; Bps. Iker of Fort Worth, Duncan of Pittsburgh, Schofield of San Joaquin and Ackerman of Quincy. This is sheer speculation on my part at this point, as, once again, the document was released without signatures. Such a curious custom among this group. If these bishops have declared that they are working toward the "formation of the 'separate ecclesiastical structure' in North America," they need to be held accountable for such an action. One wonders how much more these bishops need to do before they are judged to have abandoned the Episcopal Church.
Such a judgment needs to be made. Most likely, these four bishops will claim that their dioceses can simply transfer over to this new entity. As has been explained to them many times, that's not how it works. But, they will most likely try anyway. Which means that the faithful Episcopalians within those dioceses need to be making some plans, if they have not already. It would seem to me that they need to be contacting the Episcopal Church Center, and find out how they go about electing a Standing Committee to be their ecclesiastical authority until such time as an interim bishop is appointed.
The court cases over property will be a mess, although this development will not significantly change anything. In order to be recognized as a "replacement" or an "alternative" to the Episcopal Church, this new "ecclesiastical structure" will have to seek approval from two thirds of the Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council to have their name added to the list of churches recognized as members of the Anglican Communion. Even if somehow this new structure was to get the necessary approvals, the process will most likely take a few years. Until that happens, it is doubtful if a case can be made for the existence of a "denominational split."
I can't imagine that they will gain such approvals from the Primates, let alone the ACC. This collage of organizations include some that have been declared "not in Communion" for some time. To simply graft them in without serious study of the theological difference that divide them from the larger Communion would seem to be foolhardy. Beyond that, if the Primates allow this splinter group full membership, they will have also given permission for similar groups to form in their own backyards. That should be enough to give most of the Primates reason to have serious reservations about this new structure.
Now, indulge me as I reflect a bit on my "glass is half full" perspective, which I know some of you find quite frustrating. When I'm done, you will have the opportunity to offer the other perspective to your heart's content.
I don't necessarily think it is such a bad thing for these folks to form their own church. In the end, it wouldn't be much different from the Missouri Synod Lutherans. There's really not much left to discuss. And one way or another, we need to get past this constant bickering and move on. There's many more mission imperatives that we need to be addressing. Such a division will be tinged with sadness. Some of my friends will be leaving TEC as a result, and that hurts. But I really think it is time to let them go.
Regarding the legal matters and property issues; the leadership of TEC has a fiscal and moral responsibility to not allow our assets to be taken by illegal and immoral means. That's not going to change. But let the leaders and lawyers work that out.
Our focus needs to be those who will remain faithful to TEC but reside within areas where they are a minority. They are going to need our support as they enter uncharted territory.
I hope that some of these congregations will see this as the beginning of an exciting adventure. Imagine going from 60 congregations to 10 overnight. The new leaders, elected from among the faithful remnant, will have to gather together and ask themselves "What do we do now?" And that will be the moment when new possibilities, fresh dreams, and powerful visions will be glimpsed. There will be churches to plant, maybe in innovative ways never imagined before. There will be structures to put in place, and maybe it will be a more shared leadership that in their previous experiences they could have never thought possible. Means to connect pockets of the faithful that are scattered over remote areas will have to be discovered. Maybe a circuit rider on a Harley? I love it.
Our God declares "Behold, I make all things new!" Our Church is being renewed before our eyes. Sometimes such a shift feels painful. Sometimes it can bring us to the point despair. Well, life is painful. And we all sometimes despair over change. But, what an exciting adventure!
Ok. I'll set the glass down now. Your turn.
J.
...In order to achieve greater unity and strengthen our partnership in the Gospel, we the undersigned commit ourselves to the Common Cause Partnership as set forth in the Articles of the Partnership (see Appendix 1).This group of "disaffected, breakaway bishops" includes members from the American Anglican Council, Anglican Coalition in Canada, Anglican Communion Network, Anglican Essentials Canada, Anglican Mission in America, Anglican Network in Canada, Anglican Province of America, Convocation for Anglicans in North America, Forward in Faith North America and the Reformed Episcopal Church.
We declare clearly that we are taking this as a first step in the formation of the “separate ecclesiastical structure” in North America called for at Kigali in September, 2006...
Of particular interest is that I would imagine that this "declaration" was also signed by at least four bishops who are still members of the Episcopal Church; Bps. Iker of Fort Worth, Duncan of Pittsburgh, Schofield of San Joaquin and Ackerman of Quincy. This is sheer speculation on my part at this point, as, once again, the document was released without signatures. Such a curious custom among this group. If these bishops have declared that they are working toward the "formation of the 'separate ecclesiastical structure' in North America," they need to be held accountable for such an action. One wonders how much more these bishops need to do before they are judged to have abandoned the Episcopal Church.
Such a judgment needs to be made. Most likely, these four bishops will claim that their dioceses can simply transfer over to this new entity. As has been explained to them many times, that's not how it works. But, they will most likely try anyway. Which means that the faithful Episcopalians within those dioceses need to be making some plans, if they have not already. It would seem to me that they need to be contacting the Episcopal Church Center, and find out how they go about electing a Standing Committee to be their ecclesiastical authority until such time as an interim bishop is appointed.
The court cases over property will be a mess, although this development will not significantly change anything. In order to be recognized as a "replacement" or an "alternative" to the Episcopal Church, this new "ecclesiastical structure" will have to seek approval from two thirds of the Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council to have their name added to the list of churches recognized as members of the Anglican Communion. Even if somehow this new structure was to get the necessary approvals, the process will most likely take a few years. Until that happens, it is doubtful if a case can be made for the existence of a "denominational split."
I can't imagine that they will gain such approvals from the Primates, let alone the ACC. This collage of organizations include some that have been declared "not in Communion" for some time. To simply graft them in without serious study of the theological difference that divide them from the larger Communion would seem to be foolhardy. Beyond that, if the Primates allow this splinter group full membership, they will have also given permission for similar groups to form in their own backyards. That should be enough to give most of the Primates reason to have serious reservations about this new structure.
Now, indulge me as I reflect a bit on my "glass is half full" perspective, which I know some of you find quite frustrating. When I'm done, you will have the opportunity to offer the other perspective to your heart's content.
I don't necessarily think it is such a bad thing for these folks to form their own church. In the end, it wouldn't be much different from the Missouri Synod Lutherans. There's really not much left to discuss. And one way or another, we need to get past this constant bickering and move on. There's many more mission imperatives that we need to be addressing. Such a division will be tinged with sadness. Some of my friends will be leaving TEC as a result, and that hurts. But I really think it is time to let them go.
Regarding the legal matters and property issues; the leadership of TEC has a fiscal and moral responsibility to not allow our assets to be taken by illegal and immoral means. That's not going to change. But let the leaders and lawyers work that out.
Our focus needs to be those who will remain faithful to TEC but reside within areas where they are a minority. They are going to need our support as they enter uncharted territory.
I hope that some of these congregations will see this as the beginning of an exciting adventure. Imagine going from 60 congregations to 10 overnight. The new leaders, elected from among the faithful remnant, will have to gather together and ask themselves "What do we do now?" And that will be the moment when new possibilities, fresh dreams, and powerful visions will be glimpsed. There will be churches to plant, maybe in innovative ways never imagined before. There will be structures to put in place, and maybe it will be a more shared leadership that in their previous experiences they could have never thought possible. Means to connect pockets of the faithful that are scattered over remote areas will have to be discovered. Maybe a circuit rider on a Harley? I love it.
Our God declares "Behold, I make all things new!" Our Church is being renewed before our eyes. Sometimes such a shift feels painful. Sometimes it can bring us to the point despair. Well, life is painful. And we all sometimes despair over change. But, what an exciting adventure!
Ok. I'll set the glass down now. Your turn.
J.
Scotland: "Attempts to Expel Will Fail"
From Episcopal Life:
J.
...Archbishop Carlos Touche-Porter of Mexico and Primus Idris Jones of the Scottish Episcopal Church are taking part in a conference, titled "Celebrating Anglican Diversity," to uphold the Anglican tradition of open and inclusive theology and consider the future course of the Anglican Communion.Thanks, Bonnie.
Touche-Porter is a staunch advocate of full inclusion and diversity within the Church, especially in support of gay and lesbian Christians. "Inclusion is a reality in the Anglican Church, despite reports to the contrary," he said. "I am very much looking forward to being in the U.K. as part of our preparations for a positive Lambeth Conference."
"It was very obvious at the recent meeting of Anglican Primates that the vast majority wish to stay with an Anglican church that is open and welcoming and prepared to live with difference," said Jones. "This is Anglican mainstream and we have to make it clear that it represents [the] majority opinion among church leaders. Attempts to try to turn the Communion into something that is controlled from the center, with expulsion the result of disagreement, will fail"...
J.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Nobody Crucifies Nobody Anymore
A few days ago, Harry left us another of his amazing comments. It is too good to get buried in a thread now four posts back. So I'm bringing it out into the light:
___________________________________________________
One of the central dilemmas in Plato's Republic is how to get the philosopher -- who by virtue of wisdom wants nothing to do with the government -- to accept rule. There is much irony in the discussion, of course, but I don't think this is entirely one of Plato's reductios ad absurdum.
Our solution -- not a wise one -- is to say that the Holy Spirit takes care of this problem for us.
The problem with that approach is that we end up with--that's right--elected bishops.
In an elected body, there are only a few leaders. Who may or may not be able to lead under given circumstances.
We must not forget that the glory of democracy is the measure of our willingness to put up with its flaws -- and this applies to the House of Bishops as well. You get to be a bishop by making most of the people happy most of the time. Chances are that few of us here and few of us at Stand Firm would be really happy with any Bishop who actually spoke her mind. To some extent, we've experienced that with the Presiding Bishop -- who has disappointed glbt folks and supporters even on this list! We get upset with her and then forget about it... A good thing in the long run.
There is, however, a national character--and you find it in the government of the nation as well as in the House of Bishops. It's a character, a constitution if you will, that is little understood by foreign Primates who think they can actually establish an Anglican alternative in the States. It's the 'Don't Tread on Me' factor.
By and large, our congress and our House of Bishops are, by their natures, and by the necessary flaws of democratic action (also it's best lights), never going to do much that impresses many.
But when uboats start blowing up boats by our shores -- and when the potential fall of Britain hints at the potential fall of our own nation, woefully unprepared for war -- we're in.
And if you go on bringing in Primates from around the globe to play havoc with our Episcopal Church, there's going to be a collective case of Hot Under the Collar.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch -- I'm blessed with a parish that already knows this is a bunch of hooey and doesn't spend time fuming about it. We happily sent a check off to JCFs parish when the church burned -- and it was a substantial check considering our miniscule budget. No questions asked. We're not at all afraid to deal with issues. We've got shut ins to visit, and if a kid in the parish is in a school play--an unbelievable number of parishioners go. And I've even been to high school football and Lion's Club Chili Dinners. Trust me, it's not how I thought I'd be spending the best years of my life -- but how amazing to find the best years of one's life in bowls of chili and in kids playing TV theme songs while marching from goal post to goal post. These things -- a church burning down and all of us knowing how devastating it would be for us -- and all the little things that are a life and a day and a person make us pay attention. And we just can't spend that much time on the Communion Falling Apart or the Sky Falling Down.
Amazing moments just happen over time though. A woman, I'll call her Stella, shared with me early on that she had had the hardest time of anyone in the parish in calling a gay rector with his partner. Recently a Nigerian woman was doing laundry in our parish hall (we put a washer and drier in there so people who can't get clothes washed -- or even buy soap with foodstamps -- could clean their clothes!). She said to Stella, "You're Anglican, right? How can you allow these homosexuals to be part of your church? It's terrible." My partner -- possible the finest man I've ever met in my life -- decided not to jump into the conversation. Stella said, "You know, even just a year ago I thought the way you did. But I've changed..."
There is no difference between doing the laundry and talking about who the Children of God are. The good news? Clean underwear. And open arms. And above all -- sharing: soap, time, thoughts...and songs...
I'm so blessed to have a parish that lives this ideal -- openness -- so much so that even people who have had a hard time with the issue of hiring a gay rector have felt completely okay sharing that with me! That was the most welcoming feature of coming here to Michigan.
Alas, the Anglican Communion has some scary places in it. But people, we've got a good thing going in this little corner of it.
And I'm not leaving. And neither are any of the folks at St. John's, Mt. Pleasant, Michigan.
They can throw us out. Hell, you're not really fully Christian till you've been thrown out of something or been jailed for something. They can throw us out, but that won't change a thing. We will still be Anglican. We will still be Episcopalian. And we'll still be helping people get their clothes washed, raising money for people to buy gas to get their kids to the doctor in Grand Rapids or Ann Arbor... Or the backpacks -- we put together 200 backpacks full of school supplies for kids who really needed them here in our little town.
Our problem is not gay people. Our problem is people. They need things. They get born into problematic families or with problematic disabilities. They grow up. They get married. They get cancer. They have children. Sometimes they get divorced. Sometimes they become widows or widowers. Sometimes they feel God, or love, or the world has abandoned them. And sometimes they suddenly feel the presence of God in their lives and have to share that with people. But they also keep doing this really weird thing that we can't seem to stop them from doing: sooner or later--they all--they die. They're there one moment. And then they are gone. And it hurts so bad, so incredibly bad -- and we all wish we had paid a little more attention to them, been a little kinder, loved them a little more.
And that's when we gather to hear the Good News. Part of the good news is, in fact, that we could have done better. That part allows me to join the human race -- to see myself as I really am. And to imagine a better me. And part of the good news is that God made me, and adores me, and can't imagine a better me than the one he created. And that just takes your breath away.
I look at the Milky Way and I think, "Hey, the guy who made that made me." I look at a buttercup out in a sheep field and I think "Hey, she made this buttercup so gently and so tenderly, and those tender, gentle things in me -- they must be something she loves."
And we gather. And the love of my life stands up at the front of the church and helps us all focus, and holds wine and bread with his great big beautiful hands, and sings, and he tries to tell us the good news and almost always does an extraodrinary job of it. And the deaths, and the births, and the children, and wonderful Jacob who is deaf and blind and 19 but looks likes he's in fifth grade due to many severe developmental disabilities, and Andy who is in high school and on the golf team and recently shot a hole in one -- and always makes me laugh with his ability to be present and in the moment and welcoming and just slightly grin, and his sister Kate, who is perhaps the most beautiful woman I've ever seen and a Freshman in college and on our vestry -- and Shirley, who recently turned to me after mass and said, "O my goodness, when did we start talking this loud right after church?" and my godson Aaron who is still insisting he doesn't believe in God AT ALL (and he's nine!) but is willing to read the Bible with me in terms of the Force from Star Wars (we're making progress) and is willing, at the Peace, to say to me, "The Force Be With You" -- and all the mess and the joys and the hurts and the going on, the just going on and on and on, sits there before us and with us and in us, and Wayne tries to remind us that it is very, very important who we are and what we do, and the Anglican traditions gather that importance together and measure it and say, "Hey, coming up short, but not really -- we've got bread and wine, thanks to...um, well I thought it was Mrs. Frobush but turns out it's God again!" and from moment to moment in stuttered and stumbling reality, but with beautifully fine liturgy, and quiet confidence, we go on. And somehow, going on, we don't go.
And we won't. But, dear beloved friends throughout the communion: don't tread on us. We fiercely protect our own. Nobody crucifies nobody anymore. At least not at St. John's Episcopal, Mt. Pleasant, Michigan.
______________________________________________________
Thank you, Harry.
J.
___________________________________________________
One of the central dilemmas in Plato's Republic is how to get the philosopher -- who by virtue of wisdom wants nothing to do with the government -- to accept rule. There is much irony in the discussion, of course, but I don't think this is entirely one of Plato's reductios ad absurdum.
Our solution -- not a wise one -- is to say that the Holy Spirit takes care of this problem for us.
The problem with that approach is that we end up with--that's right--elected bishops.
In an elected body, there are only a few leaders. Who may or may not be able to lead under given circumstances.
We must not forget that the glory of democracy is the measure of our willingness to put up with its flaws -- and this applies to the House of Bishops as well. You get to be a bishop by making most of the people happy most of the time. Chances are that few of us here and few of us at Stand Firm would be really happy with any Bishop who actually spoke her mind. To some extent, we've experienced that with the Presiding Bishop -- who has disappointed glbt folks and supporters even on this list! We get upset with her and then forget about it... A good thing in the long run.
There is, however, a national character--and you find it in the government of the nation as well as in the House of Bishops. It's a character, a constitution if you will, that is little understood by foreign Primates who think they can actually establish an Anglican alternative in the States. It's the 'Don't Tread on Me' factor.
By and large, our congress and our House of Bishops are, by their natures, and by the necessary flaws of democratic action (also it's best lights), never going to do much that impresses many.
But when uboats start blowing up boats by our shores -- and when the potential fall of Britain hints at the potential fall of our own nation, woefully unprepared for war -- we're in.
And if you go on bringing in Primates from around the globe to play havoc with our Episcopal Church, there's going to be a collective case of Hot Under the Collar.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch -- I'm blessed with a parish that already knows this is a bunch of hooey and doesn't spend time fuming about it. We happily sent a check off to JCFs parish when the church burned -- and it was a substantial check considering our miniscule budget. No questions asked. We're not at all afraid to deal with issues. We've got shut ins to visit, and if a kid in the parish is in a school play--an unbelievable number of parishioners go. And I've even been to high school football and Lion's Club Chili Dinners. Trust me, it's not how I thought I'd be spending the best years of my life -- but how amazing to find the best years of one's life in bowls of chili and in kids playing TV theme songs while marching from goal post to goal post. These things -- a church burning down and all of us knowing how devastating it would be for us -- and all the little things that are a life and a day and a person make us pay attention. And we just can't spend that much time on the Communion Falling Apart or the Sky Falling Down.
Amazing moments just happen over time though. A woman, I'll call her Stella, shared with me early on that she had had the hardest time of anyone in the parish in calling a gay rector with his partner. Recently a Nigerian woman was doing laundry in our parish hall (we put a washer and drier in there so people who can't get clothes washed -- or even buy soap with foodstamps -- could clean their clothes!). She said to Stella, "You're Anglican, right? How can you allow these homosexuals to be part of your church? It's terrible." My partner -- possible the finest man I've ever met in my life -- decided not to jump into the conversation. Stella said, "You know, even just a year ago I thought the way you did. But I've changed..."
There is no difference between doing the laundry and talking about who the Children of God are. The good news? Clean underwear. And open arms. And above all -- sharing: soap, time, thoughts...and songs...
I'm so blessed to have a parish that lives this ideal -- openness -- so much so that even people who have had a hard time with the issue of hiring a gay rector have felt completely okay sharing that with me! That was the most welcoming feature of coming here to Michigan.
Alas, the Anglican Communion has some scary places in it. But people, we've got a good thing going in this little corner of it.
And I'm not leaving. And neither are any of the folks at St. John's, Mt. Pleasant, Michigan.
They can throw us out. Hell, you're not really fully Christian till you've been thrown out of something or been jailed for something. They can throw us out, but that won't change a thing. We will still be Anglican. We will still be Episcopalian. And we'll still be helping people get their clothes washed, raising money for people to buy gas to get their kids to the doctor in Grand Rapids or Ann Arbor... Or the backpacks -- we put together 200 backpacks full of school supplies for kids who really needed them here in our little town.
Our problem is not gay people. Our problem is people. They need things. They get born into problematic families or with problematic disabilities. They grow up. They get married. They get cancer. They have children. Sometimes they get divorced. Sometimes they become widows or widowers. Sometimes they feel God, or love, or the world has abandoned them. And sometimes they suddenly feel the presence of God in their lives and have to share that with people. But they also keep doing this really weird thing that we can't seem to stop them from doing: sooner or later--they all--they die. They're there one moment. And then they are gone. And it hurts so bad, so incredibly bad -- and we all wish we had paid a little more attention to them, been a little kinder, loved them a little more.
And that's when we gather to hear the Good News. Part of the good news is, in fact, that we could have done better. That part allows me to join the human race -- to see myself as I really am. And to imagine a better me. And part of the good news is that God made me, and adores me, and can't imagine a better me than the one he created. And that just takes your breath away.
I look at the Milky Way and I think, "Hey, the guy who made that made me." I look at a buttercup out in a sheep field and I think "Hey, she made this buttercup so gently and so tenderly, and those tender, gentle things in me -- they must be something she loves."
And we gather. And the love of my life stands up at the front of the church and helps us all focus, and holds wine and bread with his great big beautiful hands, and sings, and he tries to tell us the good news and almost always does an extraodrinary job of it. And the deaths, and the births, and the children, and wonderful Jacob who is deaf and blind and 19 but looks likes he's in fifth grade due to many severe developmental disabilities, and Andy who is in high school and on the golf team and recently shot a hole in one -- and always makes me laugh with his ability to be present and in the moment and welcoming and just slightly grin, and his sister Kate, who is perhaps the most beautiful woman I've ever seen and a Freshman in college and on our vestry -- and Shirley, who recently turned to me after mass and said, "O my goodness, when did we start talking this loud right after church?" and my godson Aaron who is still insisting he doesn't believe in God AT ALL (and he's nine!) but is willing to read the Bible with me in terms of the Force from Star Wars (we're making progress) and is willing, at the Peace, to say to me, "The Force Be With You" -- and all the mess and the joys and the hurts and the going on, the just going on and on and on, sits there before us and with us and in us, and Wayne tries to remind us that it is very, very important who we are and what we do, and the Anglican traditions gather that importance together and measure it and say, "Hey, coming up short, but not really -- we've got bread and wine, thanks to...um, well I thought it was Mrs. Frobush but turns out it's God again!" and from moment to moment in stuttered and stumbling reality, but with beautifully fine liturgy, and quiet confidence, we go on. And somehow, going on, we don't go.
And we won't. But, dear beloved friends throughout the communion: don't tread on us. We fiercely protect our own. Nobody crucifies nobody anymore. At least not at St. John's Episcopal, Mt. Pleasant, Michigan.
______________________________________________________
Thank you, Harry.
J.
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