Come to the Table...

Lightbearer...

2012-01-16T00:38:00.000-08:00

Lightbearer

Jesus, I call upon the power in Your name
to see the way my path must surely lead,
to heal the sick, to tend and feed your flock.
Christ, you are the Lord who calls us to make peace,
to strive for justice daily in your world,
to use your gifts of wisdom, patience, hope,
to be the servant-bearer of the Light.
Spirit, we worship you in truth and holiness.
We seek new ways to make the message clear,
to praise, confess, forgive and show your love
in breaking bread and sharing of our cup.

~~Chuck Shamel

This was written by Chuck Shamel, a member of All Saints Episcopal Church in Corpus Christi, TX.

Hillary Clinton: Human Rights are Equal Rights

2011-12-06T15:43:00.001-08:00

Go here to hear Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton deliver an amazing and inspiring speech on LBGT rights as human rights:http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/2011/12/06/lgbt-rights-human-rights/

A Clearer, Less Divisive Anglican Covenant?

2011-11-15T11:33:00.000-08:00

by Savi Hensman, November 15, 2001 on Ekklesia.

Attempts to bring in an Anglican Covenant which can be used to define Anglicanism and discipline member churches have run into difficulties.

Many are uneasy with this development. In November 2011, it became apparent that the province of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia would reject it.

In the words of a diocesan resolution, one of its clauses contains ‘provisions which are contrary to our understanding of Anglican ecclesiology, to our understanding of the way of Christ, and to justice’.

Perhaps it is time to abandon such efforts and build on the foundations laid six years ago by the Anglican Consultative Council, when it agreed a very different Covenant for Communion in Mission.

A confusing and divisive Covenant

The Anglican Communion is an international family of churches, in which there is considerable theological diversity and no central authority. However there are periodic gatherings and other connections. In recent years some Anglican leaders – including Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury – have urged member churches throughout the world to adopt a Covenant. This is supposed to strengthen unity in the face of divisions, especially over human sexuality, but has proved highly controversial.

In an attempt to win wide support, earlier drafts have been revised, to the point that some feel it is too weak. In 2010 the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) primates declared that “the current text is fatally flawed and so support for this initiative is no longer appropriate”. However, many other Anglicans still see it as too punitive, damaging the autonomy of member churches and likely to result in a divided Communion, with an inner circle made up of provinces which have signed up, while others are marginalised.

There is now widespread confusion about what the Covenant means and how it will be used, even among its supporters.

According to a Pentecost letter from Williams in 2010, “the Covenant is nothing if not a tool for mission. I want to stress yet again that the Covenant is not envisaged as an instrument of control.”

Likewise Gregory Cameron, Bishop of St Asaph in Wales and formerly Deputy Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, claimed in early 2011 that “A view has been expressed in some quarters that the covenant has been designed with narrow purposes: to squash any consideration of the place of gay and lesbian persons in the life of the Church, and to punish The Episcopal Church with expulsion from the Communion because they had made moves in that direction... that was not what the Lambeth Commission had in mind when they proposed the idea of a Covenant in the Windsor Report, and, I believe, such an understanding of the covenant is deeply flawed... the covenant itself is quite clear: it is about processes and not exclusion”.

Yet in May 2011, the Province of Southeast Asia signed up to the Covenant for the very reason that it was about control and exclusion. To quote the Preamble to this province’s Letter of Accession:

Read the rest of Savi's article here.

Clergy, laity support nonviolent protests at Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-25T11:37:00.000-07:00

By Sharon Sheridan, October 25, 2011

Episcopal News Service] In the early stages of the Occupy Wall Street protests, the Rev. Michael Sniffen and some clergy colleagues from the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island traveled to Manhattan's Zuccotti Park to observe what was happening. He's returned regularly since, talking to protestors and offering pastoral care.

"I see myself as part of the movement," said Sniffen, 31, priest-in-charge of theEpiscopal Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew in Brooklyn, New York. "I really feel like this is my generation's plea for a just society. I think the Gospels make it quite clear in Jesus' teachings that there can be no justice without economic justice."

Sniffen is among a number of Episcopal clergy and laity who are visiting and lending support to protesters at the birthplace of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) campaign. Begun Sept. 17 and inspired by the Arab Spring movement, OWS protests against greed and economic inequality have spread to more than 2,100 locations across the country and around the world, including other major cities such as Denver, Miami, Berlin, London and Tokyo.

On Oct. 23, the Episcopal Church's Executive Council issued a resolution affirming "that the growing movement of peaceful protests in public spaces in the United States and throughout the world in resistance to the exploitation of people for profit or power bears faithful witness in the tradition of Jesus to the sinful inequities in society" and calling upon "Episcopalians to witness in the tradition of Jesus to inequities in society."

Read the rest here.

Protesting greed
The Rev. Elizabeth Kaeton of Delaware said she heard a distinct message when she spent the 25th anniversary of her ordination to the priesthood at Zuccotti Park on Oct. 18.

"Everybody is really, really clear that what they're protesting is greed. It's not about luxury, it's not about capitalism," said Kaeton, who is canonically resident in the Episcopal Diocese of Newark. "People are really angry about greed, and I think that's absolutely right. … That's what made Jesus turn over a few tables in the temple, was greed and corruption. That's the moral problem that I think the church needs to speak to."

Read the rest here. You can also click on Elizabeth's name above and go directly to the story also on her blog.

-- Sharon Sheridan is an ENS correspondent. ENS editor/reporter Lynette Wilson contributed to this article.

Accidental Anniversary

2011-10-18T12:43:00.000-07:00

A year. A year in the life. One year ago, October 12th. Has it really been that long? Yes. Yes it has.

I am much better than right after, of course. Car accidents take time. Any kind of accident or incident that is traumatic to the body and soul takes time. I was so improved that, though still and always recovering, I was deemed able to return to full time work as of yesterday, the 17th by my physician. However, my employer had other ideas.

On Friday the 14th I was informed that I was being laid off with some compensation for my devoted years of service and expertise. So I worked the day as always, doing my usual duties and then packing up 30 minutes before my part time day was over. The relief of being out of the most stressful working conditions I have ever experienced were over. I knew income was my first priority, or should have been, but instead my well-being jumped to the head of the line.

I experienced a calmness, a peace, that was momentarily unexplainable. None of the usual anxiety and speculation about tomorrow or the next day. And when I described this to some fellow parishioners at Trinity, they all said "That's God's grace working in you and around you". Yes. Yes indeed.

And so, I have been running errands, on the phone making calls, canceling some appointments [my insurance stopped that day as well as my job] but it was United Health Care. How great a loss could THAT be...no much if any. Worst insurance ever and the cheapest my company could find. So I was then making other different appointments for unemployment contingencies and so on.

So I have been making some fun time for myself too as other things fall into place. Walking in this wonderful weather we are having right now, watching the leaves turn, reading outside on the patio in the sun, watering [yes, still], domestic things and also plans to visit the Growers' and Crafters' Market on Thursday mornings and then head to Trinity for the mid-week Eucharist and Healing service. Add to that visiting a friend on hospice and walking the labyrinth at Rogue Valley Medical Center one day a week.

Keeping a routine when out of work is essential. Doing something for others also lets you know that though not being paid for volunteering, there are other ways of getting "paid" for doing for others and at the same time, doing it for yourself too. So I am going to become a hospice volunteer. Class starts at the end of the month and throughout November up until Thanksgiving. I am so looking forward to that.

And so it is. One year in the life that was constantly changing daily and not always for the better. Refiner's fire, and it continues. Let it be. I have become closer to our courteous Lord as a result, even when I felt I was withdrawing. Pain distorts the real world, and it did so for me. But the focus is returning and things are reaching a new clarity.

This is part of the peace which surpasses all understanding...

Bishop Katharine visits Diocese of Quincy, once a break away diocese...

2011-10-03T19:22:00.000-07:00

Presiding bishop urges sharing fruitfulness during Diocese of Quincy visitation

By Tobyn Leigh, October 03, 2011

[Episcopal News Service] Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori urged members of the Episcopal Diocese of Quincy to keep their focus on sharing the harvest with those outside their congregations.

The Presiding Bishop met and shared her vision with several groups during her Oct. 1-2 visit. She told clergy during an early morning breakfast meeting about the scope and needs of the wider church. In an address prior to the convening of the diocese's annual synod, she reminded deputies that growth and abundance in their congregations comes when the focus is turned toward the needs of those beyond their own doors.

Diocesan youth from age eight through college age spent time with the presiding bishop during the Synod's business meeting.

In her homily during the synod's Eucharist, she told the congregants not to lose sight of keeping the walk of Jesus central even while the diocese may continue to struggle with legal issues, property concerns and the future path of the diocese.

In November 2008, a majority of the diocesan synod voted to leave the Episcopal Church and to realign with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone, forming the Southern Cone Diocese of Quincy.

"Whatever decisions you make about the structures and future of this community, living like Jesus is the most central -- that is worth all you have and all you are, nothing less," said the presiding bishop.

Read the rest of the article here.

New Rector Named for Trinity Ashland

2011-10-02T12:07:00.001-07:00

October 2, 2011

Dear People of Trinity,

it is with great pleasure that I announce the call of The Reverend Anthony A. Hutchinson to be the next Rector of Trinity Episcopal Church, Ashland. Fr. Tony will be coming to us from Beijing, China where he is the Senior Cultural Affairs Officer at the U. S. Embassy. He also serves as the Assisting Pastor and Minister of Music at the Congregation of the Good Shepherd in Beijing and is on the staff of St. John's Cathedral, Hong Kong where he serves as chaplain. For several years he taught Biblical languages and literature at Minghua Theological Seminary in Hong Kong.

The Search Team found Fr. Tony to be a priest of extraordinary capacity, experience, spirituality and energy. From his outstanding career as a Senior U.S. Diplomat, he brings strong leadership, organizational and inter-personal skills. Fr. Tony and his wife, Elena, have deep ties to the northwest. He was raised in Moses Lake, Washington and two of their four grown children live in the Seattle area. While visiting relatives in Sister's this summer, Fr. Tony read our Parish Profile and immediately felt a calling to Trinity which was confirmed by his visit here. It will be a joy to get to know him as we begin our journey together as Parish and Priest.

Fr. Tony submitted his papers for retirement from the State Department this week. As you can imagine, he will need some time to unwind from his diplomatic work and get back to the States. He will join us for his first service on January 1, 2012. In the meantime we will be ably served by our deacons and assisting clergy. I cannot believe how incredibly lucky we are to have them. Also, during this period, a Transition Team will be formed with the goal of helping Fr. Tony and Elena enter into life in Ashland and at Trinity.

It is not possible to quantify the hours and spiritual energy that the Search Team put into the task of seeking our new Rector. They have worked efficiently and tirelessly to keep to a very tight schedule without compromising the process. I am so thankful for them and feel blessed that we have such dedicated and loving people as part of our Parish.

We have only three months left now on this crazy ride we started in September of 2010. These months will be filled with quiet waiting and planning as we start to get to know Fr. Tony. Although he is in China, a very long way from us, I am sure we will have a lot of communication back and forth. But probably most important now, you have a real person to pray for as our next Rector. Thank you all for being so supportive and caring throughout this time.

Peace in Christ,

Mindy Ferris, Senior Warden

I've really got to get back to writing...

2011-10-01T10:58:00.000-07:00

...it's either that or lose my mind, although some people I know think that happened years ago...kidding.

So as I wait for some cinnamon toast and a cup of tea, I've been thinking. Writing is one of my passions and I have not been doing nearly enough of it to fill a thimble. I haven't blogged since July and people are quickly going all Facebook to post their thoughts and ideas rather than what started it all...blogging.

A blog is something you can call your own. You conceive of the idea, decide on what you wish to convey visually and verbally and then you put it all together with a blogging wizard [the rest of the 99.9% that cannot write in HTML or XML, or whatever the code is] and wallah! I am a bit proud of my little blog as it did save my mind and heart back in March of 2006 when it was born. It was a blog about me at first, then about my opinions, then my reflections and editorials on what other people or entities were thinking or spouting, as the case may be...then it became about the Episcopal Church, about convention that year, about electing the first woman bishop, about narrow-minded members of the Church breaking off from progress and inclusion of all the baptized and the not-so-baptized. That's because Christ's love supersedes ritual or sacraments that we create to maintain an ancient yet living memory and distinction.

Don't get me wrong. I love the liturgy and the rituals of our denomination cement the earthly concepts we have of honoring one who sacrificed self for us. Our history and that of the world contains numerous accounts of self-sacrificing individuals who have given their life for others or country. But these things--are not necessary for salvation--however one interprets it.

I have written about love and loss, human and animal, about depression, about my shortcomings as well as those I perceive in others. When you are a blogger you can write about anything or anyone, almost.

Because I am a writer, a seeker and communicator, I write about stuff that means something to me or is reflective of who I am. Many people say "Oh, be careful what you write! You could lose your job!" I'm not worried, not in the least. And maybe this is why I will take up blogging again, and do it more often.

Facebook is ok most of the time, when you can figure out what the programmers are trying to do, and even when you aren't trying to figure it out, it keeps people in touch immediately. So the posts here will be more in the way of opinion, editorial, and spiritual. Occasionally maybe it will only be a photograph that posts, being a commentary unto itself. At least I'll try to keep the focus there. And to do so requires some discipline and focus. As for me, I hope to return to full time work soon. All the therapies I have been engaged in since the accident have almost run their course. There's some permanent damage that denotes a new normal which I have been trying to adjust to all year long, sometimes succeeding, other times just wanting to give up. But there are people, thank goodness, who won't let me do the latter.

I thank Rev. Tom and his wonderful Huberta for being there in prayer for me, as well as Shirley, Vicki, Denise and David, Morgan+, Meredith+, Carol+ and countless others who have befriended me with prayers across the country and overseas, bloggers, Facebookers, and Tweeters.

So let this be a new beginning for Come to the Table and for me.

Thank you,
Catherine

Time Does Not Stand Still...

2011-07-14T21:34:00.000-07:00

...in fact it is moving so quickly, the weeks are like days and the days, like hours...but it cannot move fast enough for my physical healing...it will be a year come October, and that's not far from now...I know, my school teacher friends are telling me to hush because our summer only arrived at the end of June, an entire "month" late, as our warm weather almost always begins early or mid-May.

Two steps forward, three back...that seems to be my progress toward the "new normal". I know I will never be the same as before the accident. Everything has changed and continues. Some would say, well change has always been happening...and it has but not to the extent it has for me individually, but it's like jumping to lightspeed in Star Wars...only with the effects of gravity big time. And not only physically healing but emotionally, and spiritually. None of it is easy or can be put on a schedule or timeline for "completion".

With our friend Kirstin going to be with God on July 1st, a lot was put into perspective for many of us. Time should be our ally and not our enemy. Sometimes easier said than done. Most people find it easy to fill their days with people, activity and desired alone time. The rest of us struggle with one or more of these aspects, and that is what makes time hard to deal with. I'm one of those people and I am not ashamed to say so. Friends see the outside me, but don't look deep enough to see me on the inside. True, I do hide the inside me from them most of the time, because it is socially unacceptable to let people really see what disagrees with you about them, and their behavior toward you. I'm as authentic as I can be but something just flips and we hide our true selves from others.

I want to take this time right now to thank Deacon Meredith+ at Trinity Episcopal, Ashland, for keeping an eye on me, for bringing me Eucharist, for sharing about her life, allowing me to bear her burdens for a little while, as she bears mine. For letting me be useful to my sister in Christ, as faithfully as she has been to me. Thanks M+. Love you.

So there is a little update. I am still grounded from flying for now; hopefully that will change in time for me to use my flight credit from last year before it expires on the anniversary of my accident. My physical therapist has suggested that I go on a retreat for a weekend to the Buddhist monastery in northern California or the Redwoods monastery in the same general area. I may consider something closer...we'll see...nothing like a little renewal to help things along.

I've decided to keep the blog for now...and I am hoping I will have more energy to write in the future. That will make most of you happy I am sure, judging from comments I received when I expressed that I might close it down...but I think it will keep.

Peace and love to you all...be happy and enjoy life. Time does not stand still.

Catherine

"Shalom and the Wholeness of God" by Christine Sine

2011-06-03T23:21:00.000-07:00

"In the last few years economic turmoil, natural disasters and an ongoing wave of war, conflict and uncertainty have shattered our confidence in the future. Many of us laughed at the end times gurus who thought that the world would end on May 21st but if we are honest, deep within us was an uncertainty about the future that made us wonder if they could be right.

What we believe about the future toward which God is leading us will greatly impact our ability to both prepare for the future here on earth and participate in God’s redeeming activity. For most of us the future we dream of is shaped, consciously or unconsciously, by a culture that tells us success and prosperity will follow us all the days of our lives.

Tough economic times and natural disasters have brought that dream into question but have not replaced it with a compelling and gratifying new vision. Proverbs 29:18 tells us that without a vision the people perish, and I think it is true. Not only are we in danger of perishing, but many others in our world are already perishing because of our limited understanding of the future and particularly of a vision of world made new in which all are provided for that God wants us to be a part of..."

Read the rest here...good words for hard times: http://godspace.wordpress.com/2011/06/04/turbulent-times-are-here-to-stay-believe-in-the-future/

You will need to cut and paste the link as Blogger won't let me paste the link into the phrase "good words for hard times"...eye roll.

Catherine

Valters-Paintner: spiritual discomfort can be a good thing...

2011-05-27T23:01:00.000-07:00

My friend Jan Hilton, sent me the link to Christine Valters-Paintner's rich article on "The Spiritual Practice of Being Uncomfortable", and I am so thankful. I have already passed it onto a friend in emotional and physical grief over the finality of relationship. I am going through a similar disconnection with someone I cared for deeply and thought the feeling was mutual. Nothing hurts more than when someone breaks up with you with an email from another state, deciding that YOU are not the right person for them but they want to be friends. Nothing quite so devastating as losing a loved one who is still very much alive. Did I want to be in love? Yes, at some point but not yet. It goes to show you that we are all fallible human beings, that two people contribute to misunderstandings that lead to more difficult situations. No perfect world here. We all just stumble along and maybe the dice will fall into a favorable set where things work out and the building of relationship can start anew. That has been my hope, but even in hope we must be careful, as I have come to find out. I still hope that at some point in time, when the storms of hurt and anger settle themselves, we can find our way back to discussing Buddhism, what it is to be an Episcopalian, an eco-conscious person, mindful of our world, large of small, here in America or the outer reaches of Nepal or the vastness of the Sahara, or mountains of South American. Mindfulness of just how fragile we are, and that even in our most caring moments, we can wound without intention or unknowing with gestures, tones of voice [or tones of email messages], and silences. And silence becomes distance where once the well-worn path with its fine earthen dust used to be delightfully disturbed but has since become overgrown with slender grass, and the path is barely perceptible, yet you know it's there just waiting for one of us to take the first step and cross over.

I find that I am a very forgiving person; perhaps too much so for my own good. Yes, yes, I know what Christ says about forgiveness and grace, but when the pain is raw and the edges of the wounds are jagged and torn, in need of tending. I'm in health care so I know how to patch myself up in most cases but when it comes to wounds of the heart, I'm not so good. Sure, I can make some progress; there are balms that help alleviate the emotional, mental and physical toll such grief and pain can take, but the real healing comes when there is someone who has been in that "place". Maybe they have been "there" 3 or 4 times, or even more. And those of us that do, we manage and limp along, knowing in our hearts that the healing another brings is another way of seeing, and revealing us in ways we had never seen ourselves before. And kindly with deliberate care, they--being the ones who brought the grief to us--can be instrumental in our return to wholeness if they are the kindly souls we have always hoped they would be: caring, compassionate, in a helping profession, some who has walked our journey, struggled on our path, and though we may not have cared about their advice at the time, we eventually see some wisdom in what they have been trying to say all along.

I am at the place where I can acknowledge that...now. I wasn't there a week ago, but I am newly arrived at the possibilities where I find my heart and mind and spirit open to new ideas and ways of being and doing. We have this ideal or idea of what God is regardless of our faith life, past or present. A benevolent, strong but gentle "father" or "mother" or "sister" image. But the author of this article I bring to your attention courtesy of my Texas friend Jan Hilton who sent it to me as a love offering, which I enfolded to my being because it spoke and whispered and occasionally shouted the wisdom it offers.

In the suffering of physical pain we experience a lot mental and emotional pain; they go hand in hand. It is easy to dwell on the physical because it is tangible and made manifest in our physical selves. Our physical well-being is strongly linked to our emotions and how we think and perceive our grief, this current pain that affects everything.

So I offer to you, you of all faiths and backgrounds and beliefs, this group of words of wisdom. Simple and easy to comprehend. From a spiritual seeker writer and creator of marvelous spirit art and though I give you the benefits of spiritual discomfort:

So much of what passes for spirituality these days is about making us happy and having positive experiences. But sometimes, I would argue, we need to be uncomfortable.

By Christine Valters Paintner, May 24, 2011

Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,

Break all our teacup talk of God.
If you had the courage and
Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,
He would just drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.
Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth . . .
The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:
Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out. ~ Hafiz

Read the rest of this enlightening article here. You will be glad you did...

http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Spiritual-Practice-of-Being-Uncomfortable-Christine-Valters-Paintner-05-25-2011.html?

This is my offering to you because it was an offering to me in my time of relational grief. May you glean from it ways of coping and doing and moving forward; we all have so much life to live, let's not grief here too long. Raise a cairn to it's memory but dwell not upon it forever, or you will lose yourself to what you cannot have or hope to attain. Gradually set it aside, so it will not get into your way as you go along your journey to joy and peace where serenity awaits us all, even me.

Catherine+

Posting my truth...

2011-04-16T21:20:00.000-07:00

...and I don't give a flying fig if the opposing side in this lawsuit has checked out my blog or Facebook page. It is what it is and I make no apology for any of it. So there...have a nice day, you all over on the other side of the deposition table.

Wendell Berry: From another blogger's post...

2011-04-13T07:05:00.000-07:00

....which blogger, I can't remember, but it suits where I am and possibly where I am going...so here it is...

No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over the grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.
~ Wendell Berry ~

Hard journey...

2011-03-25T21:41:00.000-07:00

The last year has been very eventful and not in what I would call a positive way. It has been hard and tiring, wearing me down at times to a point where I don't think I can recover, but somehow I manage with God's grace. It has not been a particularly happy year, more of a year of resignation to whatever comes along and remain moving forward almost automatically. Time has been drawn out but the days have sped by, blurring from one to the other.

At this time, right now, everything that should be a positive thing, isn't, and it presses down hard on the soul and grinds the body and mind, seemingly crushing any will that might be left to keep going. Admittedly I am in a very difficult part of my life. Work is oppressive and my only bit of joy is in the patients themselves. I still don't have a car or truck to call my own. I am in the debt of people I once felt close to because they are allowing me to borrow a family member's car, but the pressure is on to return it and I feel that acutely. Physical pain is daily, sometimes better, sometimes worse, but physical therapy continues every week. My personal life is in reverse...being friends after being something more is difficult but I will stay the course because we can't seem to not be an integral part of each other's lives now. That's ok...it will somehow be ok, though at times it is hard to see forward, this person is a good person; it's just the way life goes. Mentally and emotionally I am drained and very, very tired. Sleep does not come easily but it eventually comes for a little while.

Walking apart from my parish church is necessary but devastating in many ways. I don't have that fellowship of spirit or community, and will embark on visiting for the next several months the UCC in Ashland and also the First Methodist Church there, alternating between them and visiting Trinity at least once a month to reconnect with people there. The dissolution of what I used to know as a ministry that brought joy and purpose is painful. The way decisions are being made there now is not how it used to be, fair and involved all concerned. Instead arbitrary decisions are made by a few and applied to all in the ministry I was involved in, that of the Lay Eucharistic Ministers, those who served the altar and carried the Gospel...that's gone now. I cannot abide such covert, destructive change. It is so very unnecessary and has driven me to seek new community and solace elsewhere.

So that is the state of this blogger...I find little to inspire me these days with all the unrest and natural devastation...yes there are those who have it worse off, or so it seems but this is my reality, and my pain is no less than anyone else's who is in a difficult place. No pity party here, just the facts as they are, and this explains why I have not written or posted. I don't know the future of this blog...I'm still thinking about whether it is time to be over, having served it's purpose of a kind of outreach to my larger community. And since I am no longer really active in that community, perhaps it is time to leave this endeavor and begin a different one. Time will tell...thank you all for your past and current support and care.

Catherine

Presiding Bishop in Dublin, Ireland

2011-02-06T21:14:00.000-08:00

Episcopal News Service report on the Presiding Bishop's visit to the Primates' meeting in Dublin, Ireland.

"We're challenged in this very body to 'show up,' to present ourselves ready, willing, and able to help heal this broken world," Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said on Jan. 30 during her sermon at the 9 a.m. Sung Eucharist service at Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland.

Highlighting sobering statistics of child mortality rates in some parts of the world – like Angola, where nearly 20 percent of children die before their first birthday – Jefferts Schori said the healing of the world "needs the participation and leadership of all parts of the body of Christ. It starts with urgent voices, and changed hearts, our own conversion, and our challenge to systems that perpetuate all kinds of sickness and death around the world."

Jefferts Schori noted the brutal murder of Ugandan gay rights activist David Kato, who was bludgeoned to death in his home community on Jan. 26.

Kato "has been a strong voice for the basic human rights of gay and lesbian people," Jefferts Schori said. "His voice has been silenced. We can pray that others will continue that work, or be challenged by the brutality of his death into some conversion of heart. Will we challenge the world to respect the dignity of every single human being?"

Jefferts Schori is attending the Jan. 25-30 meeting of Anglican primates at the Emmaus Retreat Centre near Dublin. Seven primates have chosen to stay away from the meeting because of Jefferts Schori's presence and recent developments supporting the full inclusion of gay and lesbian people in the Episcopal Church.

Read the rest here.

-- Matthew Davies is editor and international correspondent of the Episcopal News Service.

"the road not taken"

2011-01-02T14:01:00.000-08:00

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost
Mountain Journal
1916

...and four days later...crunch...

2010-11-27T16:20:00.000-08:00

...I was in a car accident.

The morning of Tuesday October 12th...7:30 am PST, downtown Medford next to the Rogue Community College campus, I stopped for pedestrians wishing to cross the busy three-lane north-bound avenue. There's a sign that says "Stop at this --> white line for pedestrians" and the arrow is pointing toward the pavement. There are three of these white lines in each lane. If one car stops, they are all supposed to stop and that morning they did, right after I stopped in the far right lane. I had just glanced over to my right where the two people waited to cross. There was a click and then my world went black...

People have been listing on Facebook the things they are thankful for. I've thought about my answers to that for a while now as I have been recovering from the accident. I am thankful for a God so brilliant he puts the idea of superb engineering and technology in the heads of mere mortals so that other mortals might have a chance to live. Some call my accident a simple fender bender. It was far from that, especially if the vehicle that hit you sends you across three lanes of traffic and half a block up from where you started...not good.

There is nothing about losing consciousness or having a concussion that is simple. It was far more than a "fender bender". Sure, I didn't lose any extremities or bleed out from internal injuries, or break any bones. And that is because my car was made of heavy steel and a frame that gave no quarter to the impact and subsequent flinging around that, maybe in another car, would have caused more injury. The car and those who made it, saved me from things being much different than they turned out to be. I have written BMW to thank them for such a great little car. 1990 was a very good year.

I am thankful for the prayers my parish have sent up on my behalf, for the prayers of those on Facebook and in my local community who have been supportive and caring to call to check in on me, bring me Eucharist and wait patiently for me to walk to the lectern to read the lesson, or help lift the cup to their lips when I first returned and served the altar. I'm thankful for the assistance and understanding of coworkers too.

I am thankful too for my parish church, Trinity Ashland, for healing prayers and sending m home communion by way of lay Eucharist ministers, for the phone calls with offers of food, care and concern and offers of general help. You know who your family is when they take care of you like I was and still am by my parish family.

From the outside, the hit doens't look that bad but the frame was bent from the back to the mid-line support right behind the driver and passenger seats, so much so that the back doors had to be pried open they were so jammed shut. So there it is.

What's really weird too is that only four days before the accident I had signed up my "tag team" on my Advanced Health Care Directive and had theirs and my signature witnessed over coffee. Talk about timing...there is nothing more comforting than having a retired trauma and surgery nurse and LMT [licensed massage therapist] as your main representative and a certified medical assistant--both close friends--as my "tag team". Who need I would need them so soon? One never can tell. So if you don't have an Advanced Directive signed for the state you live in, DO IT. Don't put it off. Keep a copy in your briefcase or bag, or better yet, digitally scanned and in your phone or laptop. Make sure your local hospitals have it scanned into their database. Take it with you on trips, foreign or domestic.

It's good to write again...I see it as part of my recovery. It's important to talk about things and since you reading this, you must care to know what happened in a more reflective narrative, so, Wallah!

Take good care everyone and be safe and prepared.

Blessings,

Catherine

RevGalBlogPals Friday Five...on a Saturday

2010-10-09T17:58:00.000-07:00

SingingOwl over at RevGals offers this Friday Five Meme: Give us the the first word that comes to mind (you know how that works, right?) and then add a little something about why, or how or what.

Pumpkin:    soup

Campfire:      primitive

Apples:          pie, my fav with vanilla bean ice cream and cuppa...

Colors:          turning of time

Halloween:    a counterquarter day celebrated by the Celts...but for me, Celtic Christian prayers

The above intro lifted from SeekingAuthenticVoice....credit where it is due.

Blogging for Clean Water for the World

2010-10-08T23:23:00.000-07:00

Jan, over at Yearning for God, has a fabulous post on how bloggers and readers can unite on October 15th for clean water for the world. Go here to her blog for the details!

"When I was thirsty, you gave me water..."

Lectionary Leanings...

2010-10-06T21:29:00.000-07:00

The RevGalBlogPals has an enriching exercise that posted on Tuesday in regard to the lectionary readings for that day. I love the question: What makes you well? Doesn't that get to the heart of the matter, or at least puts the brakes on and makes us settle the dust to think about it long enough to find an answer?

If you want to know more, go here to their article.

I posted a comment there along with those of others. Today, right now, I answered in truth. Living alone when your spirit and soul prays for another to share life with, in whatever capacity, well, you just have to have a lot of faith that God is so with you that you feel it in your bones. That's where I am right now, today, actually this week. So, there it is.

Check it out. There are links to the lectionary readings so you can inwardly digest the gist of the post.

Catherine

TheRevGal Blog Pals Friday Five: Do you have trouble sleeping?

2010-09-10T23:36:00.000-07:00

Written by my fellow Episcopalian priest Facebook friend, Terri C Pilarski has brought us the Friday Five a la The Rev Gal Blog Pals. Here's Terri's prologue to the Five:

Last night was a restless night in my home. We are dog and cat sitting for our daughter, which means we have a combined household of three adult humans, four large dogs, two cats, and one kitten. And for some reason the dogs, cats, and kitten, all wanted to sleep in OUR bed. Did I mention that it's just a double bed? Did I mention that it was warm in our room - too cool to turn the air conditioning on but no breeze to blow the cool night air in....add to that my general age-related tendency toward insomnia, and it was a difficult night for sleeping.

A number of my facebook friends seem to have similar challenges sleeping....

So, on that note our Friday Five today will focus on sleep, or the lack there of.

1. Are you prone to sleep challenges? Insomnia, snoring, allergies? Other sleep challenges?
Yes I am. The insomnia turned about to be mild obstructive sleep apnea that caused elevated blood pressure and rapid, labored heart beats that actually kept me awake most of two night. After an NOS, it was discovered my oxygen saturation had slipped far below the Medicare standard of 88% or greater.
Since then I am in treatment for that with respiratory therapy that is work and I'm losing weight!

2. When you can't sleep what do you do? Toss and turn? Get up and read? Play computer games?
Warm shower, massaged head, clean hair; fluff up down pillows, settle in after turning on an hour long recording of night sounds at lakeside...not too loud, not too soft, just where it plays on the edges of your wakefuness. Those sounds filter into my mind as I calm it and set thoughts adrift. I make sure the room is as dark as possible so my eyes will rest, open or shut. I wait for four feet to walk over me at some point and then I start to fade away...

3. When you do sleep do you remember your dreams? Or just snipets of them?
My dreams are like film shorts, playing in color, stopping and starting. Other times, images just rush to the fore and can awaken me in unsettling ways, or they stay still and I can see and smell the scene or image, or feel something that is a part of what the composition is conveying.

4. Can you share a funny or confusing dream you've had? Or a dream you have over and over?
I can't remember funny things though I am sure they happen; sometimes I replay the previous Sunday service where funny things do occasionally happen. The dreams these days are a lot less scary then the ones I used to have, for that I am thankful.

5. When you don't sleep how do you get through the day? Lots of coffee? or a nap later in the day?
FIrst I remind God of what a bad night it was and I pray, then remind Him again that only Spirit can get me through in an upright position as called for. I also eat a high protein breakfast with strawberry jam involved and bacon along with a cup or two of very black tea.

If you play the Friday Five at your blog and would like visitors, be sure to share a link here, using the following formulation: what you want the link to say goes here For a complete how-to, click here.

Kirkepiscatoid: "Oh, you wanted me to GUARD the sheep?"

2010-09-06T21:43:00.000-07:00

A brilliant and revealing blog post on clergy sexual abuse and harassment has posted at Kirkepiscatoid. See the link below the first part of her post. I urge everyone to read it and pass it on. There is abuse in the Episcopal Church, as in any denomination. The only way to fight it is through knowing it happens and often. It is not always or often the product of affairs but of power-hungry clergy who are too arrogant for tasteful words. I should know, I'm a victim and survivor of such harassment. Kirkepiscatoid: "Oh, you wanted me to GUARD the sheep?"

Of those surveyed:

• More than 3% of women who had attended a congregation in the past month reported that they had been the object of clergy sexual misconduct (CSM) at some time in their adult lives;

• 92% of these sexual advances had been made in secret, not in open dating relationships; and

• 67% of the offenders were married to someone else at the time of the advance.

• In the average American congregation of 400 persons, with women representing, on average, 60% of the congregation, there are, on average of 7 women who have experienced clergy sexual misconduct.

• Of the entire sample, 8% report having known about CSM occurring in a congregation they have attended. Therefore, in the average American congregation of 400 congregants, there are, on average, 32 persons who have experienced CSM in their community of faith.

--From the Baylor University study on sexual exploitation and abuse by clergy

The recent events in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania with Bishop Bennison's knowledge of abuse perpetrated by his brother, have brought up something that doesn't seem to be, in my mind, told enough. It is illustrated in the facts from the Baylor University survey above.

Eight percent of people in a given congregation have KNOWN that clergy sexual abuse was going on in their parish.

Eight percent. Yes, it's a minority, but it is a noticeable one.

Unfortunately, more often than not, they know and don't talk.

The magnitude of this has just hit home recently for me.

I have been visiting at length with a friend of mine who, I believe, has been sexually exploited by a clergy member in the Episcopal Church in another diocese. What has been rather dismaying to her has been as she has been putting out "feelers" to figure out how to most appropriately discuss and deal with this, it has become apparent in the inquiries that people "guessed who it was"--which means they KNEW this person was walking a little on the shady side.

It's the church's version of "Don't ask, don't tell."

Read the rest here:
Kirkepiscatoid: "Oh, you wanted me to GUARD the sheep?"

"Words Matter" by Terri Pilarski+

2010-08-17T20:58:00.000-07:00

As we say in the blogsphere, "This'll blog!" and indeed it will and does. The Church and the use of language and what it means when we do use it, you know inclusive vs exclusive and all of that...intrepid supply priest of the Diocese of Chicago, Terri Pilarski+, opines regarding a recent meeting about language and how words do matter, as well as context for each of us. Read on and you will see what I mean:

[Episcopal News Service] "For slightly less than half my life I was an intentionally de-churched person. Although the faith of my childhood had been a source of great comfort to me I also found that church to hold a very narrow view of God. My own prayer life suggested to me that God was much more expansive than the church was teaching me."

So began my own story at last week's ecumenical "Words Matter" gathering on expansive and inclusive language in the church, hosted by the National Council of Churches' Justice for Women Working Group at Cenacle Catholic Retreat Center in Chicago.

Through the power of stories, the 25 people -- ordained, lay, gay, straight, women, men, Native American, African American, Latino, white, Asian -- called each other to expand our cultural attentiveness, understanding that language speaks differently in different contexts...

Read the rest of Terri's+ insightful opinion here...right here.

Two words, I have for you....

2010-08-09T09:12:00.005-07:00

Proper 14 Year C RCL Isaiah 1:1, 10-20

8 August, 2010 Psalm 50:1-8, 22-23

Trinity Episcopal Church, Ashland, OR Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

The Rev. Anne K. Bartlett, Rector Luke 12:32-40

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. Amen.

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, columnist Peggy Noonan wrote:

The biggest political change in my lifetime is that Americans no longer assume that their children will have it better than they did. This is a huge break with the past, with assumptions and traditions that shaped us.

Optimists think that if we manage to turn a few things around, their kids may have it . . . almost as good. The country they inherit may be . . . almost as good. And it's kind of a shock to think like this; pessimism isn't in our DNA. But it isn't pessimism, really, it's a kind of tough knowingness, combined, in most cases, with a daily, personal commitment to keep plugging.⁽¹⁾

Do these words resonant with you? They did with me. I worry about the future our children and grandchildren will inherit, the seemingly insolvable problems my generation has bequeathed to them. This is not the Age of Aquarius we thought was dawning back when we were young. This is an age of anxiety and anger and an increasing disconnect between the old-fashioned American dream and the reality of ordinary people on the ground.

Another sea change since the 60’s has been the place of the church in the culture. So much has been made of the rise of the religious right, of the growth of conservative Christian congregations. But the truth is, the political leverage of right-wing Christianity peaked some years ago and has been on the wane for a while. But what is also true is that mainline Christian denominations have been marginalized in numbers and influence to the point where even many of our friends –much less the media -- think it’s quaint that we still bother to worship on Sundays, because, really, what’s the point?

We may be getting back to where to started two thousand years ago – the church as a minority, countercultural sect. Though in this country we are not persecuted, thanks be to God, we have definitely been discounted as having anything important to say to society at large. And it’s all happened so fast, to those of us of a certain age, our loss of place in the culture, our not-so-long ago positions of prestige and status and influence.

This may not be a bad thing. For years now, I have come to believe that as a church we’re being purified, to use traditional Christian language – and why shouldn’t we? It’s our language, it belongs to us, and we should use it, even if it isn’t in fashion to use such words as “sin” and “redemption,” even if it makes some folk uncomfortable to hear words like “purification” and “faith.” We lose our language, we lose our bearings, our identity as Christ’s church. We forget we have been bought with price and we become instead a gathering of like-minded, friendly, tolerant people who find fellowship and comfort and a sense of belonging, but please! We don’t really want to be changed, much less transformed. Let’s not take this church-y stuff, these ancient texts, these aesthetically-pleasant rituals too seriously.

I have two words from the Lord for us today. Please take them seriously.

The first word is this: Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Those words were written to a struggling Christian congregation who was facing hostility, not mere indifference, from their surrounding culture. They were words written to encourage them, to put some courage into them, by reminding them of what they already knew in that way of “deep knowingness” that comes from within, rooted in experience. When you hear these ancient, encouraging words – faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen -- don’t make the modern mistake of thinking of faith as “belief” in the sense of giving intellectual assent to a set of propositions, almost in the sense of doing someone a favor by deigning to agree to such things.

No. Let go of the head trip, the over-importance of your own thoughts. Rather, reframe faith as trust. As in: These words are true and can be trusted. As in: an assurance, an inner conviction, a trust that God will make all things well in God’s good time. As in trusting the Way of Jesus to be the Way of Life, the Way Home. I have faith, I trust the Holy Spirit is working in me and in you and in our world in ways we cannot begin to imagine.

We say in the old words of the Nicene Creed that we believe in God, we believe in Jesus Christ, we believe in the Holy Spirit who gives us life. Faith is believing in things that cannot be seen, trusting in things that cannot be proved. I believe in my marriage. I believe in my children. I believe in you. I believe in the future of this parish. I don’t know what shape it will take, but I believe in your ongoing, enduring, and faithful life as Christ’s Body in this place.

Credo. We believe in God. Credo. We give our hearts to God. Our heads follow as they can, some days more easily than others. Faith is trust that the God whom we have come to know in creation and in Jesus and in the presence of the Holy Spirit, the God whom we have come to know in Scripture and sacrament and in the ordinary everyday-ness of our lives is the same God who will see us safely Home, you and me and the whole world, the whole broken, blessed creation.

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Abraham and Sarah, the biblical parents of us all, showed us how to live in faith, how to experience life as a journey, not knowing exactly where we are going, ever on the move, camping out, glimpsing and greeting the Promised Land across a far-off river, never fully getting there this side of the Kingdom, but trusting we are Homeward bound. That’s the life of faith, with all kinds of adventures along the way, some bringing sorrow and tears, others bringing delight and ever-unexpected newness of life.

In the “deep knowingness” of faith, we, like Abraham and Sarah and all the saints, know that we are but strangers and sojourners upon this earth, resident aliens, homesick pilgrims yearning for the city of God, longing to be Home, trusting we are beloved children in spite of our selves, this ragtag, motley crew of men and women and children called the Church, trying to make our way Home by following the Way of the One we call the Christ, plugging away with a daily, personal commitment fueled by prayer and sometimes by our own stubbornness not to give up.

It’s just so easy to get lost. To give up. To wander away. To lose faith that what we’re doing means anything.

That’s exactly, precisely when we need to be encouraged. Which is why we need to be in each other’s company on this journey Home.

Listen to what Frederick Buechner says about faith, in writing on this text:

By faith, we understand, if we are to understand it all, the madness and the lostness we see all around us and within us are not the last truth about the world but only the next to last truth…Faith is the eye of the heart, and by faith we see deep down beneath the face of things – by faith struggle against all odds to be able to see – that the world is God’s creation even so. It is God who made us and not we ourselves, made us out of his peace to live in peace, out of his light to dwell in light, out of his love to be above all things loved and loving. That is the last truth about the world.⁽²⁾

And then Buechner goes on to say, Is it true? And he answers, No, of course not. Look at the world around us, the madness and the lostness of it. But Yes, it is true, we know it is true in that way of deep knowingness, we have experienced those moments of God’s grace, we have caught glimpses of God’s peace and light and love, those holy moments we cannot forget and that keep us going in spite of ourselves. So we live, says Buechner, in the

no-man’s land between the Yes and the No because that’s where faith lives, and always has; and we wait for the next invasion of hope, for yet another glimpse of Kingdom even now breaking into our world, into our sight.

Which brings me the second word from the Lord this day: Be not afraid, little flock, for it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. Be not afraid. But of course we are afraid. And when human beings get afraid, we clutch, we tighten, our breath becomes shallow. When we are not afraid, when we trust, we let go, we loosen our grip, we breathe from our bellies like little children do.

When we are afraid, we tend to trust only what we can see and touch and count and control. We cling to our stuff as if it could save us often more out of fear than out of greed. We clench, we cling, we hold tight, we pull inward and away from others, we lose our faith in the promises of God.

Again this week, Jesus tells us to be ready, to be alert and attentive, because our times are in God’s hands and we need to be ready to receive the gift of God’s presence, which can happen at any moment, day or night. But the tone of today’s gospel is not one of alarm or cause for panic but rather a plea that we remain ready to receive the gift of grace, that we are willing and ready to be in those thin places where heaven touches earth where we are no longer servants but beloved friends at Our Lord’s banquet, where he sits us down so that he, himself may serve us and feed us.

There are altars everywhere. There are signs of the Kingdom below the surface of things every moment that can be glimpsed here and now by those who have eyes of faith to see, there is an ongoing invasion of divine hope into our anxious, angry, clenched-up world.

I believe that. I’ve experienced it. And so have you, dearly beloved ones. So have you. And I also have come to believe that it is the task of the church, of this church, to hold that hope – in faith -- for the sake of the world – not a Pollyanna-ish hope, not a silly, ungrounded optimism, not a denial of reality, but a strong and brave and gritty and enduring hope that is rooted in the deep knowledge of the gospel. That is what it means to have faith. That is our burden and our blessing.

In Christ’s name, this day and evermore.

1. Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal, August 7,2010, OpEd Page.

2. Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons (2006), “Faith,” p.71.

GERMANY: Archbishop of Canterbury to deliver keynote speech to Lutherans

2010-07-20T22:31:00.000-07:00

Story courtesy of EpiscopalLife Online and the Ecumenical News International, Geneva. Now let's see what trouble the ABC will stir up among our Lutheran "brethren" [our sisters and brothers]...read the story below by Peter Kenny, July 20, 2010

Ecumenical News International, Geneva] Lutherans from around the world are converging on the German city of Stuttgart for the 11th Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation, where on July 22 Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will deliver the keynote address.

Williams, the spiritual leader of the 78-million-strong Anglican Communion, may offer advice in his keynote address on how to deal with the issue of clergy who are in same-sex relationships, as this issue has left his communion verging on a schism and has triggered fierce debate among Lutherans.

The Geneva-based LWF comprises 140 member churches in 79 countries, representing more than 70 million Christians, and it is expecting an estimated 1000 people, including 418 delegates from Lutheran churches, to participate in the Stuttgart assembly.

Read the rest of the story here.

When will he stop meddling in the affairs of people, being a busybody and causing division in the ranks? Probably when there is nothing left for him to do but sit alone in Lambeth wondering where everyone has gone to...

Abuse in the Church: it does happen

2010-07-12T19:03:00.001-07:00

http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_123419_ENG_HTM.htm

Shamelessly lifted from Openly Episcopal in Albany...

2010-07-04T18:51:00.000-07:00

Thanks to John White, new Facebook friend and fellow Episcopalian for posting the quote transcribed by Dennis Wisnom at the diocesan convention of Central New York, 2009. I invite you to check out John's blog too at this Wordpress blog.

The Presiding Bishop shares her personal opinion about the Proposed Anglican Covenant

"My personal opinion is that it's really an inappropriate structural response to a situation that is going to become more and more common. My shorthand is that it's an Enlightenment response to a Post-Modern problem. Building more structure is not going to fix the challenge of living in a diverse community. The challenge of living in a diverse community is most effectively responded to by building more relationships, not by building walls, and that's hard work. It's easier just to say, 'well, you're not doing what we want, so goodbye.' That's not a Christian way of responding, that's not living into the love poured out in Christ, in my understanding."

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
speaking at The Holiday Inn, Liverpool, NY
site of the Diocesan Convention, Episcopal Diocese of Central New York

The Rev. Anne K. Bartlett reflects on how "love has saved us all."

2010-06-20T17:21:00.000-07:00

The Rev. Anne K. Bartlett, Trinity Church, Ashland, Oregon:

In the name of the Holy One: Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-Giver. Amen.

Sometimes I like to imagine Paul writing his letters to those little congregations he had started from scratch and whose ongoing struggles and sorrows and joys he followed as a father follows the lives of his children long after they’ve grown up enough to be out on their own.

As I imagine Paul writing those letters we still cherish and read today, I watch him search for just the right words, giving guidance and counsel and encouragement, sometimes exploding in exasperation, sometimes defending his authority to teach them, patiently laying out one more time how the life and death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ has brought us all Home to God, our Creator and heavenly Father.

When Paul wrote to the church in Galatia, I see him at one point giving a huge sigh of frustration: “What don’t they understand about the word all?!” …in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith…all of you are one in Christ…

It’s not a big word -- all. It’s a little word, a common word, a word even very young children can say and understand, an ordinary word meaning “everything” and “everybody” and “nobody’s left out.” All. What’s so hard to understand about that?

As Paul himself knew, the concept of all may not be difficult to understand but the practice of

radical inclusion requires all but the most saintly of us to stretch beyond our fears and self-centeredness in ways that demand our constant vigilance and effort and commitment and practice.

There is a part of being human that rebels against embracing all, that resists including everybody in the circle. Our resistance shows up in human development pretty clearly by the time we’re toddlers, when we discover we are separate little persons, a discovery that both terrifies and exhilarates us.

What is it about all that we don’t understand? Oh, I think it has to do with all kinds of things swimming in the depths of the shadows of our psyches. We don’t want to understand all because of our fears that there won’t be enough to go around, whether it’s dessert or love or money. We don’t want to include everybody because of our fears of the unfamiliar, of strangers, of people who don’t look and act and talk like us, of concerns for our own safety and security. We don’t want to accept all because by doing so we run counter to our own desires, our own greed and selfishness, so we dream up all kinds of logical-sounding reasons why it’s sensible and prudent to draw lines and boundaries and create hierarchies and procedures for who gets what, who’s in and who’s out, who is worthy and who is not.

Before the Holy Spirit knocked him off his high horse on the road to Damascus, Saint Paul was an expert in differentiating between people, he knew exactly how to categorize, analyze, systemize, put people in a pecking order, deem who was worthy and who was not according to a deformed and rigidified understanding of religious law. In his previous life (the life he had before his encounter with the risen Christ that changed everything), there was no one more zealous than Paul in enforcing life-and-death lines of inclusion and exclusion.

And now look at him, there he is writing his letters to his beloved churches, putting into his glorious words how we are now all new creations in Christ, the past no longer has any power over us, we are called to live in a new reality, a new world, as persons identified no longer by anything other the love of God in Jesus Christ who has made us all children of God.

And in this new life of ours, this baptized life, this life in which we have vowed to respect the dignity of every human being, we are called to an astounding diversity beyond our own preferences, inclinations, or designs.

Living into the all is reminding ourselves, a hundred times a day if necessary, that we belong to the family of God, and that is what identifies us – not our achievements, not our family background, not our political affiliations nor our social status, not even our precious self-expressions. Our Way is not about us; it’s about God, the God whose face we have seen in Jesus.

Paradoxically – and our faith is nothing if it’s not paradoxical! – we grow up in our faith when we acknowledge our failure to stand on our own. Only then are we broken open to trust in the grace of God rather than in our own merits. In our dependence on God’s grace we discover we are one in the Body of Christ. We are one in the family of God. All of us. All.

Except it’s so hard to stay grounded in that new creation, that alternative reality, isn’t it? It’s so easy, so human, so tempting to go back to the old ways of thinking that to be “good enough” means I have to be “better than,” that some people are better and more valuable than others, and that there are others who must be kept out.

It’s hard, spiritual work to stay grounded in the new creation, to keep making the circle bigger when it’s really uncomfortable to be stretched that far. It’s not easy to live in God’s kingdom on earth right now, this day because…well, because we do get afraid, and we are greedy, we lose our grip and we lose our trust that there really is enough of God’s love to go around and we begin to doubt that all things will be well, in God’s good time. We try to get by with being merely nice and polite, and we forget that God’s Kingdom isn’t about good manners, it’s about a life-changing alternative reality in which we are to see one another – everyone; all – as our brothers and sisters.

The Episcopal Church has known something of the pain and the cost of enlarging the circle in Christ’s name. At our General Convention last summer, bishops, clergy and lay deputies voted overwhelmingly and without a great deal of fanfare to lift the self-imposed three-year moratorium in our church on the election and consecration of openly gay bishops, a moratorium requested by the leadership of the Anglican communion. After three years of compliance and continuing attempts to engage in mutual dialogue, our national Episcopal church discerned, one more time, that the way we are hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit is to go forward with our commitment to not exclude any member of Christ’s church from consideration for any ministry in our church on the basis of sexual orientation, gender, race, or anything else of that order.

Here at Trinity, Ashland we are nearly all of one mind on this issue, so much so that I sometimes take flak because I don’t preach more about inclusion of those with different sexual orientations. My response is that I think this congregation is at the point where the only thing that matters to us is whether a person wants to worship God with us and join with us as we try to be Christ’s hands and heart, his Body, in the world.

A couple of years ago I got a phone call from someone doing a survey; the person asked how many gay and lesbians we had in positions of leadership in our congregation. I had to stop and think because it wasn’t a category that made any sense to me, nor, I believe, to the vast majority of us. Male or female, straight or gay, comfortably well-off or on food stamps, of color or not of color, old or not so old, native Oregonian or from a foreign land (like California) -- what difference does it make in this place? Democrat or Republican…well, we need to work on that one. And I’m serious about that. We are individuals with our own distinct gifts and peculiarities, but the only thing that matters here is that we are the family of God, the church of Christ, and you are welcome.

As you may have heard, our national Episcopal Church is again in hot water with some parts of the worldwide Anglican Communion over the consecration a few weeks ago of two women bishops in the Diocese of Los Angeles, one of whom happens to be a lesbian in a committed relationship.

Last Sunday, our Presiding Bishop, Katherine, had been invited to preach and celebrate the Eucharist at Southwark Cathedral in England. In the week prior to her visit, the Lambeth office of the Archbishop of Canterbury pressured Katherine’s office to provide evidence of her ordination to each order of ministry – deacon, priest, and bishop. Then, the Archbishop of Canterbury directed our Presiding Bishop that she was not to wear her mitre, the symbolic hat that bishops wear. She could carry her hat, but not put it on her head. Nor was she to carry a crozier, the symbolic shepherd’s crook that bishops carry in the liturgy. Some bloggers are referring to this incident as Mitregate; or, Kat in the Hat.

Oh dear. What is it about all that some of us still don’t understand?

Back home this week in a meeting with her executive council, Bishop Katherine briefly described the incident and said it was “nonsense” and “bizarre, beyond bizarre.” When the press got wind of the story, she had her spokesperson make the following statement: “there isn’t anything more to say. Rather, Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori and the Executive Council are focused on the mission and ministry of the church.”

I must admit I’ve gotten hooked by this latest story of who is acceptable and who is not in the church. A British reporter (and I want to thank Catherine Windsor for directing my attention to this source), a British reporter pointed out that the Dean of Southwark Cathedral, The Very Rev. Colin Slee, had been put in very awkward position. He was the one who had invited Katherine in the first place, as he has invited a number of women bishops from other parts of the Anglican Communion to preach and celebrate at the cathedral. At Evensong last Sunday, the dean addressed the situation; as I read his remarks, I hope you’ll hear whispers and echoes of the words Paul wrote to that Galatian church so long ago:

There are several reasons for the fury, Dean Slee said in his Evensong homily. The presiding bishop is a woman and some people hate the idea of women as bishops. The General Synod of the Church of England is about to debate the admission of women as bishops within the Church of England. The church in the United States has just consecrated an openly lesbian woman as a suffragan bishop in Los Angeles and so they are accused of breaking an embargo on such consecrations. It is not nearly so simple.

We welcome Katherine Jefferts Schori to this pulpit, he continued, because we love our sisters and brothers in the Episcopal Church of the United States; not because she is a female, or a woman bishop ahead of us, or has permitted a practicing lesbian to become a bishop; we welcome her because she is our sister in Christ.

[The actions of the Episcopal Church] in recent months, he said, have been entirely in accord with the Anglican ways of generosity and breadth. They have tried to ensure everyone is recognized as a child of God. They have behaved entirely in accord with their canon laws and their freedom as an independent province of the church, not imposing or interfering with others with whom they disagree but proceeding steadily and openly themselves.

In her sermon last Sunday morning, Bishop Katherine preached on the story from Luke about a

woman off the streets who crashed a dinner party, washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and dried them with hair, offending nearly everybody present. Katherine then asked: “What makes us so afraid of the other?”

That’s such a big part of the problem, isn’t it, the problem we have with all – that underneath all our bluster and self-righteousness, we are afraid of the other, the ones who are different, the ones who make us uneasy, the ones we’d rather not have to deal with. Our anxiety ratchets up and the lines get drawn in the dirt, and people get hurt, or worse.

In the gospel stories, over and over and over again, Jesus encounters and engages those beyond the familiar inclusionary lines, he heals those whom everyone else is afraid of, he eats with those with whom no one else will eat. Over and over and over again, Jesus shows us what all looks like. And the picture both terrifies and exhilarates us.

In the gospel story this week, Jesus crosses over to the other side, the other shore where the Gentiles live and where they raise pigs to feed the legions of Roman soldiers who are bivouacked near by. The first person Jesus encounters is a man half-alive, out of his mind, barely human, living among the dead; he is naked, violent, unpredictable, in every way ‘unclean’ and utterly alone in the world. Jesus drives out his demons and heals him in body, mind, spirit and in relationship. Naturally the man begged to stay with Jesus, but Jesus says: “No, go home. Now you have a home again; go back there, that is where your ministry is. Tell the people you know how much God has done for you.” For many of us, ministry is going back to our own homes and proclaiming to those we know how much Christ has done for us.

Bishop Katherine ended her sermon last week with these words:

There is room for us all at this table, there are tears of welcome and a kiss for the wanderer, and the sweet smell of home.

Want to join the feast? You are welcome here. Love has saved you.

Love has saved you.

Love has saved us all.

Godspace and Mustard Seed Associates

2010-06-20T13:45:00.000-07:00

A while back I came across the blog Godspace by Christine Sine. I was in the midst of refinding myself after 2 and half years of grief and continued depression, as well as unemployment, and it occurred to me that if I got back to gardening and yardwork, I would find the connection that so used to revive my spirit and body.

So, I hopped on a search engine and began Googling gardening, flowers, plants, gardening as meditation and the like. One of the links brought me to Godspace, and I was delighted to find it. Here was not just articles on good gardening but also on the spiritual side of it, the reconnecting to creation and with that came the deeper, easier connection to a renewed spiritual life. Well, at least the reviving of a once thriving spiritual life. Grief and loss threw what I had known and loved down a steep ravine, and I wasn't sure I could rescue it or revive it once I had it back. Combine that with the depression that follows hard on the heels of both and it is Mt Everest of impossibility, or so it seemed. It helped to talk through it with a good friend and also my spiritual director. Turns out I had not only lost my love of gardening and green living things of beauty to these three factors but apparently I was connected to them and I too had been in the deep ravine but over two years managed to climb out and salvage that connection to green, flowering, growing, amazing things, including the odd weed.

So now, I turn to life with quiet joy and anticipation. That is if we get any warm consistent weather here in southern Oregon. Tomorrow will be the first day of summer. It is 62 degrees...I hold out hope for some hot stuff and sun.

Turning back now to Godspace by Christine Sine, it is a virtual resource for her insight into gardening and intentional living. And for us Nor'westers, she is one of us, lives in Seattle and gets the weather angle and challenge that we have in this part of the country. Mustard Seed Associates, her connection with like-minded Christians who look forward in the future toward sustainable and intentionally created communities.

And MSA "is a small non profit organization that seeks to raise awareness of challenges that Christians will face in their lives, churches & communities in the future. It is unique in that it is a crossroads, grassroots organization – connecting people across generations, denominations and cultures and encouraging them to become cultural creatives."

Godspace later became an e-book on her site. But here is what Christine tells us about it:

Is the pulse rate of your life beating out of control? Do you feel out of sync with the shalom lifestyle God intends you to have? Are you having a hard time sifting through the noise and busyness in order to connect your life to God? Jesus modeled a degree of peace, celebration, and rest that’s hard to find in our stressful, hurried pace. We long to be more like him, but that lifestyle often seems unachievable.

GodSpace, an updated version of the author’s earlier book Sacred Rhythms, is a prescription for healthy living that flows directly from your faith. Christine Sine invites you to make space for God and enjoy the benefits. She looks at the natural rhythms God built into our world and how paying attention to them can strengthen every part of your life.

I have it and though I have only read parts briefly [Goal: make time to read the stuff that really matters], I am drawn to its wisdom and ideas for helping to restore what I had once known and so looked forward to each day. She also has other books and articles, prayer cards and so forth available. She hosts workshops on Celtic prayer and enriches her own life with the prayerful teachings of Richard Rohr.

In her other book To Garden With God, she takes us through the seasons of the Spirit as well as the seasons of the year. All her writings are available on her blog and then through links to an ebook site.

Though my life has been complicated by issues at work since February, I am determined to make more time for outside, the garden areas around my home, rescuing the neglected Bleeding Hearts on the east side of the house, taming the wildness of my backyard and maybe evening planting some vegetables. I know I must set aside time to do this each evening and if I do I will be rewarded not only with the beauty of creation and the caring of it, but with a renewed spirit and outlook.

I encourage those of you who garden and even the ones who don't to read or check out Christine's insights into this vital connection of gardening with God and also how to live intentionally with and among others. Be sure to check out her workshops tab as well. She offers Rhythms of Grace, Thin Space: Learning from the Celtic Saints, and the landmark annual Celtic Prayer Retreat.

And by all means, if you are into Green living, her blog is a huge resource.

And now I will leave you to it...it is where I am headed!

Catherine

Executive Council sends message to the Episcopal Church: An Excerpt

2010-06-18T21:50:00.000-07:00

This is an excerpt of the Executive Council's message to the Episcopal Church from their latest meeting, held from June 16-18, 2010, in Linthicum, Maryland. This is the section on the visit with invited guest Canon Kenneth Kearon, SecGen of the Anglican Communion. His responses as is, are in my humble opinion, ridiculous. The whole report can be found here.

"The 45-minute session on Friday with invited guest Canon Kenneth Kearon was carefully prepared for by the Standing Committee on World Mission, who wrote the thoughtful and substantive questions that made clear our commitment to being an inclusive church while also deeply committed to classic Anglicanism and deepening our relationship with our sisters and brothers across the Communion.

Canon Kearon began by describing the beginning of the current tensions as the increasing “problem of growth and diversity in the Anglican Communion.” This statement was significant to a body that has long seen diversity in the Body of Christ as an opportunity and has sought to base its actions on the baptismal promise that we will seek and serve Christ in all people and respect the dignity of every human being.

The questions sought clarification on the presenting issues, including the Archbishop of Canterbury’s removal of appointees from The Episcopal Church to ecumenical bodies and Canon Kearon’s statement that The Episcopal Church does not “share the faith and order of the vast majority of the Anglican Communion.” He also responded to concerns about incursions by other provinces of the Communion.

He acknowledged that the Archbishop of Canterbury considers certain activities of the Province of the Southern Cone to constitute an incursion, but is awaiting clarification about the extent of these activities from the primate of that province. However, such ongoing breaches of the moratorium on incursions do not rise to the same level of departure from the faith and order of the Communion as does the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered Christians.

The Council very much appreciated the chance to meet with Canon Kearon, who agreed to respond in writing to additional questions from members of the Council."

I'm curious about the "additional questions". Might one or two be about how the ABC insulted ECUSA's PB? Hmmm???

Catherine

Ruth Gledhill's article at "Articles of Faith" on Mitregate, The Sequel

2010-06-18T21:35:00.000-07:00

Some of you haven't been able to open the link on Facebook that I posted tonight, so here is the article in its entirety. Ruth's blog has been moved behind the "paywall" at The Times and cannot be accessed without getting a subscription. So this is her last post on the Typepad blog of the same name, "Articles of Faith".

Catherine

_________________

June 18, 2010

Mitregate: The Sequel

Note: This will be the last post at the blog at Typepad. Articles of Faith is the first of The Times blogs to go permanently behind the paywall and onto a different platform. You can find it here.
Thank you for Come to the Table for this picture by Andrew Gerns of Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, or 'Kat in a Hat' as she is now known, carrying The Mitre:

Other women bishops who have celebrated at Southwark, complete with mitre, include Bishop Ann Tottenham, retired suffragan bishop of Toronto. She presided and preached on Saturday November 9th 2002. Bishop Ann, incidentally, is a 'real' lady bishop. She is Lady Ann, daughter of the 8th Marquess of Ely. But this doesn't excuse Lambeth allowing her to wear a mitre and not Bishop Katharine.

Read on for what Dean Colin Slee told The Times today.

At the back left of this picture, taken at Salisbury cathedral just before the 2008 Lambeth Conference, is Bishop Katharine resplendent in a glorious gold mitre. Do you think she took it off when she went inside and processed down the aisle. I don't think so.... So why the mitre ban at Southwark? Below, Colin explains.

The Dean of Southwark said US Bishop Geralyn Wolfe also preached but did not celebrate on 25th November 2001. 'I can say that female bishops have preached relatively recently in both Salisbury and Gloucester Dioceses and worn their mitres with the respective permission of the Diocesans.'
Regarding the two women bishops who processed with mitres at Southwark, Colin adds: 'I was not present on either occasion, it would seem to me that permission from Lambeth (presumably that was George Carey) was not sought, or Lambeth made no fuss. Our Diocesan was however present when Anne Tottenham was here.

'It all goes to show what a silly boy I was to be properly courteous to the ABC and ask permission in the first place! But I can also say that my definition that an 'Episcopal Act' is consecrating, ordaining, confirming might have been a wiser course of action. AND I think the other hats in today's Times are so much more fun.'

He's talking about Ascot of course.

And just to be truly ecumenical, I'm going to link now to Damian Thompson's blog on mitregate. In his own inimitable style, he gives great background to the stylistic elements of this story:
'Note the bishop’s shirt underneath her alb. (A quick footnote: until a few decades ago, some evangelical bishops would have their mitres carried in front of them rather than wear them – not because they doubted their episcopal orders, but because mitres as hats as opposed to symbols were popish.) However, Dean Slee (an old mate of mine who wants to see Anglicanism follow the logic of liberal Protestantism properly and quickly) does personally recognise Jefferts Schori as a bishop, even if he’s not ready to pick a fight with Lambeth over headgear. So, she’s a bishop in Southwark Cathedral, a simple priest in Lambeth Palace, and a lay person masquerading as a priest in Southwark’s Forward in Faith parishes. There may even be one or two churches which, adhering to the position taken by some Anglo-Catholics in the 1980s, recognise her as a deacon but not a priest.'
Some of the comments at Holy Smoke are quite fun as well.

Posted by Ruth Gledhill on June 18, 2010 at 06:20 PM | Permalink

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Mitregate

2010-06-17T19:54:00.000-07:00

By now many of you have heard about what happened in Southwark Cathedral when ++Katharine Jefferts Schori, Primate of the Episcopal Church USA when she processed at the beginning of the service, when she preached, when she celebrated Eucharist and when she recessed at the end of the service.

In a word.

Mitregate.

Here are some links to the story from a few sources. Each source lends a new perspective on what happened on Sunday last.

The EpiscopalChurch.org covered one view with this headline:

Lambeth Palace tells presiding bishop not to wear symbol of office:

Jefferts Schori carries mitre during recent visit to Southwark Cathedral

Another headline was from Ruth Gledhill, columnist for The Times London with a different angle:

Bishop crossed in mitre row

Then there was this picture taken by Andrew Gerns+ who was there in the service and he took this picture of our steadfast and persevering Presiding Bishop:

Then there is this little tidbit from a Facebook priestly friend who was very clever who remarked on a photo from Wikipedia with a clever headline. I think it should be her new dom de plume:

++Kat in The Hat...

Presiding bishop describes Canterbury's sanctions as 'unfortunate'

2010-06-08T20:49:00.000-07:00

By Marites N. Sison, of Canada's Anglican Journal, reports ++Katharine's response to Rowan Williams' striking out at Americans and our Canadian brothers and sisters, in both the Episcopal and Canadian Anglican churches, in his feeble and impotent attempt to punish us for living Gospel lives...

June 08, 2010

[Anglican Journal] Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has described the decision by Lambeth Palace to remove Episcopalians serving on international ecumenical dialogues as "unfortunate ... It misrepresents who the Anglican Communion is."

Jefferts Schori's comments were made during a June 8 press conference at the Anglican Church of Canada's General Synod 2010 in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Before the sanctions were imposed on the Episcopal Church as a consequence for having consecrated a lesbian bishop, Jefferts Schori said she had written a letter to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams expressing her concern.

"I don't think it helps dialogue to remove some people from the conversation," she said shortly after addressing General Synod. "We have a variety of opinions on these issues of human sexuality across the communion ... For the archbishop of Canterbury to say to the Methodists or the Lutheran [World] Federation that we only have one position is inaccurate. We have a variety of understandings and no, we don't have consensus on hot button issues at the moment."

Please go to this page to read the rest of Marites' article in the Journal.

++Katharine replies to +Rowan: Pastoral Response to THE Letter

2010-06-03T06:37:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the Episcopal News Service, who has much more time than I to write a better formed introduction to this Pastoral Letter by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori in response to the Pentecost Letter from Rowan Williams delivered at a "Building Bridges" in Washington DC on May 28th, where in fact he played with fire and burnt instead of built anything of note...

[Episcopal News Service] Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has issued a pastoral letter to the Episcopal Church, in which she refers to the Pentecost letter from Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and urges continued dialogue with those who disagree with recent actions "for we believe that the Spirit is always calling us to greater understanding."

In his May 28 letter, Williams acknowledged the tensions caused in some parts of the Anglican Communion by the consecration of Los Angeles Bishop Suffragan Mary Douglas Glasspool and the ongoing unauthorized incursions by Anglican leaders into other provinces. Glasspool is the Episcopal Church's second openly gay, partnered bishop.

Jefferts Schori acknowledged in her letter that "the Spirit does seem to be saying to many within the Episcopal Church that gay and lesbian persons are God's good creation, that an aspect of good creation is the possibility of lifelong, faithful partnership, and that such persons may indeed be good and healthy exemplars of gifted leadership within the Church, as baptized leaders and ordained ones. The Spirit also seems to be saying the same thing in other parts of the Anglican Communion, and among some of our Christian partners, including Lutheran churches in North America and Europe, the Old Catholic churches of Europe, and a number of others.

"That growing awareness does not deny the reality that many Anglicans and not a few Episcopalians still fervently hold traditional views about human sexuality. This Episcopal Church is a broad and inclusive enough tent to hold that variety."

The full text of the letter follows. The letter is also available as audio on the homepage of the Episcopal Church website here.

"Pentecost continues!

Pentecost is most fundamentally a continuing gift of the Spirit, rather than a limitation or quenching of that Spirit.

The recent statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury about the struggles within the Anglican Communion seems to equate Pentecost with a single understanding of gospel realities. Those who received the gift of the Spirit on that day all heard good news. The crowd reported, "in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power" (Acts 2:11).

The Spirit does seem to be saying to many within The Episcopal Church that gay and lesbian persons are God's good creation, that an aspect of good creation is the possibility of lifelong, faithful partnership, and that such persons may indeed be good and healthy exemplars of gifted leadership within the Church, as baptized leaders and ordained ones. The Spirit also seems to be saying the same thing in other parts of the Anglican Communion, and among some of our Christian partners, including Lutheran churches in North America and Europe, the Old Catholic churches of Europe, and a number of others.

That growing awareness does not deny the reality that many Anglicans and not a few Episcopalians still fervently hold traditional views about human sexuality. This Episcopal Church is a broad and inclusive enough tent to hold that variety. The willingness to live in tension is a hallmark of Anglicanism, beginning from its roots in Celtic Christianity pushing up against Roman Christianity in the centuries of the first millennium. That diversity in community was solidified in the Elizabethan Settlement, which really marks the beginning of Anglican Christianity as a distinct movement. Above all, it recognizes that the Spirit may be speaking to all of us, in ways that do not at present seem to cohere or agree. It also recognizes what Jesus says about the Spirit to his followers, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come" (John 16:12-13).

The Episcopal Church has spent nearly 50 years listening to and for the Spirit in these matters. While it is clear that not all within this Church have heard the same message, the current developments do represent a widening understanding. Our canons reflected this shift as long ago as 1985, when sexual orientation was first protected from discrimination in access to the ordination process. At the request of other bodies in the Anglican Communion, this Church held an effective moratorium on the election and consecration of a partnered gay or lesbian priest as bishop from 2003 to 2010. When a diocese elected such a person in late 2009, the ensuing consent process indicated that a majority of the laity, clergy, and bishops responsible for validating that election agreed that there was no substantive bar to the consecration.

The Episcopal Church recognizes that these decisions are problematic to a number of other Anglicans. We have not made these decisions lightly. We recognize that the Spirit has not been widely heard in the same way in other parts of the Communion. In all humility, we recognize that we may be wrong, yet we have proceeded in the belief that the Spirit permeates our decisions.

We also recognize that the attempts to impose a singular understanding in such matters represent the same kind of cultural excesses practiced by many of our colonial forebears in their missionizing activity. Native Hawaiians were forced to abandon their traditional dress in favor of missionaries' standards of modesty. Native Americans were forced to abandon many of their cultural practices, even though they were fully congruent with orthodox Christianity, because the missionaries did not understand or consider those practices exemplary of the Spirit. The uniformity imposed at the Synod of Whitby did similar violence to a developing, contextual Christianity in the British Isles. In their search for uniformity, our forebears in the faith have repeatedly done much spiritual violence in the name of Christianity.

We do not seek to impose our understanding on others. We do earnestly hope for continued dialogue with those who disagree, for we believe that the Spirit is always calling us to greater understanding.
We live in great concern that colonial attitudes continue, particularly in attempts to impose a single understanding across widely varying contexts and cultures. We note that the cultural contexts in which The Episcopal Church's decisions have generated the greatest objection and reaction are also often the same contexts where women are barred from full ordained leadership, including the Church of England.

As Episcopalians, we note the troubling push toward centralized authority exemplified in many of the statements of the recent Pentecost letter. Anglicanism as a body began in the repudiation of the control of the Bishop of Rome within an otherwise sovereign nation. Similar concerns over self-determination in the face of colonial control led the Scottish Episcopal Church to consecrate Samuel Seabury for The Episcopal Church in the nascent United States – and so began the Anglican Communion.
We have been repeatedly assured that the Anglican Covenant is not an instrument of control, yet we note that the fourth section seems to be just that to Anglicans in many parts of the Communion. So much so, that there are voices calling for stronger sanctions in that fourth section, as well as voices repudiating it as un-Anglican in nature. Unitary control does not characterize Anglicanism; rather, diversity in fellowship and communion does.

We are distressed at the apparent imposition of sanctions on some parts of the Communion. We note that these seem to be limited to those which "have formally, through their Synod or House of Bishops, adopted policies that breach any of the moratoria requested by the Instruments of Communion." We are further distressed that such sanctions do not, apparently, apply to those parts of the Communion that continue to hold one view in public and exhibit other behaviors in private. Why is there no sanction on those who continue with a double standard? In our context bowing to anxiety by ignoring that sort of double-mindedness is usually termed a "failure of nerve." Through many decades of wrestling with our own discomfort about recognizing the full humanity of persons who seem to differ from us, we continue to work at open and transparent communication as well as congruence between word and behavior. We openly admit our failure to achieve perfection!

The baptismal covenant prayed in this Church for more than 30 years calls us to respect the dignity of all other persons and charges us with ongoing labor toward a holy society of justice and peace. That fundamental understanding of Christian vocation underlies our hearing of the Spirit in this context and around these issues of human sexuality. That same understanding of Christian vocation encourages us to hold our convictions with sufficient humility that we can affirm the image of God in the person who disagrees with us. We believe that the Body of Christ is only found when such diversity is welcomed with abundant and radical hospitality.

As a Church of many nations, languages, and peoples, we will continue to seek every opportunity to increase our partnership in God's mission for a healed creation and holy community. We look forward to the ongoing growth in partnership possible in the Listening Process, Continuing Indaba, Bible in the Life of the Church, Theological Education in the Anglican Communion, and the myriad of less formal and more local partnerships across the Communion – efforts in mission and ministry that inform and transform individuals and communities toward the vision of the Gospel – a healed world, loving God and neighbor, in the love and friendship shown us in God Incarnate.

May God's peace dwell in your hearts,"

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church

+Rowan burns bridges instead of building them...

2010-05-28T22:30:00.000-07:00

On Facebook today, Diana Butler Bass, author, commented in her status line about the ABC of Canterbury's Pentecost letter punishing American Anglicans for neglecting to fall in line with "moratoria",

Diana Butler Bass: "Does anyone think it a little odd that ABC Rowan Williams issues a Pentecost letter essentially kicking American Anglicans off all ecumenical commissions while he was in DC attending a conference called "Building Bridges"? So many layers of inconsistency and irony that it leaves me breathless..."

Here's the letter in it's entirety [and I cannot seem to get the font to behave on blogspot!]:

Canterbury proposes resignation of ecumenical commission members

By Matthew Davies, May 28, 2010

[Episcopal News Service] Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is proposing that representatives currently serving on some of the Anglican Communion's ecumenical dialogues should resign their membership if they are from a province that has not complied with moratoria on same-gender blessings, cross-border interventions and the ordination of gay and lesbian people to the episcopate. Williams made his proposal in a May 28 Pentecost letter to the Anglican Communion, in which he specifically refers to the May 15 consecration of Los Angeles Bishop Suffragan Mary Douglas Glasspool and the ongoing activity across provincial boundaries. Glasspool is the Episcopal Church's second openly gay, partnered bishop.

Two Episcopal Church members serving on the Anglican-Orthodox Theological Dialogue and one on the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order are expected to be affected by the proposal.

Sadly enough, read the rest here.

News you should know...

2010-05-17T19:52:00.000-07:00

...about your Church. Just follow the links below for all kinds of news stories, information and...just stuff.

Catherine

_______________________________________

First off, two women bishops ordained and out of the starting gate: Read about it here.

OR here, from Episcopal Life Online...

OR, thanks to Susan Russell+ at An Inch At A Time see some video of the consecrations, here.

Elizabeth Kaeton+ of Telling Secrets also has great coverage photos and first hand account of the consecrations, so do pop over.

Openly Episcopal in Albany has a great article on what the Presiding Bishop thinks of the Anglican Covenant.

The Episcopal Cafe has a great presentation on what other Episcopal churches are doing around the country. I hope it's a permanent feature.

Women veterans are most likely to fall through "the cracks" upon their return home as resources are few and far between but a priest who as a part-time chaplain in the service saw the need and did something about it. Please read about it here.

The Church of England is stuck in a time warp about women bishops. If you must, and you should just so you know what our cousins are doing, read about the "amendments" to the consideration of women bishops [sorry, major eyeroll here]. Just. Get. On. With. It. We are light years ahead of you, cousins in the C of E.

And then I came across this little gem of Christian Mysticism...I know, way off the news freeway but still I was looking for information on Margery Kempe and look what I found...if you haven't been to it already or know about it, you will LIKE!

And finally, what self-respecting Episcopalian doesn't know that there is an Underground movement? These guys are great and newsy. Try Anglican Underground, THE blog.

Book review: The Art of Racing the Rain by Garth Stein

2010-05-12T21:33:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been buying sad books. Don't ask me why; dunno. It has been a rough first part of the year work and health-wise but the weather is improving; I even gardened a little. But it seems that the poignant books are making their way home with me. And so it is or was with this title, The Art of Racing the Rain. It's a book written from a pet dog's point of view. The book has its' lighter moments and its' unbelievable moments but it is heart-wrenching and shows the deviousness of the human hearts of the antagonists when their collective malicious hearts set out to take away everything the dog's owner holds dear.

There was one particular "chapter" that moved me in a special way; maybe because of the loss of my own canine companion. I like the philosophical sense behind this particular passage, as Enzo, the narrator and main character, reflects on the next life. Well, his next life and the possibility:

"In Mongolia, when a dog dies, he is buried high in the hills so people cannot walk on his grave. The dog's master whispers into the dog's ear his wishes that the dog will return as a man in his next life. Then his tail is cut off and put beneath his head, and a piece of meat or fat is placed in his mouth to sustain his soul on its journey; before he is reincarnated, the dog's soul is freed to travel the land, to run the high desert plains for as long as it would like.

I learned that from a program on the National Geographic Channel, so I believe it is true. Not all dogs return as men, they say; only those who are ready.

I am ready." ~~ Chapter 18 ~~

The faithfulness of a dog. Well, there is nothing like it. It is unconditional and steadfast. They love you no matter what kind of day you have had and they look after you when you don't notice. The perspective the author gave Enzo is so plausible. Looking back I now understand some of Dragon's behaviors and those memories are endearing having read this book.

I won't tell you how it ends, but I encourage you to read it. If anything you will learn how manipulative some people can be to make others miserable and try to take all they value away. Maybe you know already; most of us do, but it's a different angle and honestly, we don't know ALL the angles of life.

When is a dog not a dog? I suggest you read the book and find out.

I think we could all benefit from an Enzo.

Catherine

Picture is from dogtime.com

Bishop Katharine responds to Anglican primates about bishiop-elect Glasspool

2010-04-07T17:51:00.000-07:00

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has written her fellow Anglican primates regarding the upcoming consecration of bishop-elect Mary Glasspool. The letter is posted at the Diocese of East Tennessee website, and reprinted below:

March 2010

My dear brothers in Christ:

I write you because of developments in The Episcopal Church, about which you will soon hear and read. As you all know, the Diocese of Los Angeles elected two suffragan bishops in December, and the consent process for those bishops has been ongoing since then. One of those bishops-elect is a woman in a partnered same-sex relationship.

At this point, she has received consent from a majority of the bishops with jurisdiction, and a majority of the standing committees of this Church. According to our canons, I must now take order for her consecration. I will do so, and anticipate that both bishops-elect will be consecrated at the same service on 15 May. It has been my practice, since I took office, to preside at the consecration of new bishops, and I intend to do so in this case as well.

It may help you to know that our House of Bishops will continue to discuss these issues at our meeting later this month. The papers we discuss will be available publicly following that meeting, and we will endeavor to see that you receive copies. I would encourage you to engage in conversation any bishops whom you know in this Church, particularly those you came to know at Lambeth, whether in Bible study or Indaba groups.

Know that this is not the decision of one person, or a small group of people. It represents the mind of a majority of elected leaders in The Episcopal Church, lay, clergy, and bishops, who have carefully considered the opinions and feelings of other members of the Anglican Communion as well as the decades-long conversations within this Church. It represents a prayerful and thoughtful decision, made in good faith that this Church is ‘working out its salvation in fear and trembling, believing that God is at work in us’ (Philippians 2:12-13).

I ask your prayers for this Church, for the Diocese of Los Angeles, and for the members of the Anglican Communion. This part of the Body of Christ has abundant work to do, and God’s mission needs us all.

If you have questions about this decision or process, I would encourage you to contact me. I would be glad to talk with you.

I pray that your ministry may continue to be a transformative blessing to many. I remain
Your servant in Christ,

Katharine Jefferts Schori

The photo is of bishop-elect Mary and Bishop Bruno of the Diocese of Los Angeles.

Hat tip to Ann Fontaine+ [What the Tide Brings In blog], who posted the story in her status that led me to The Lead at Episcopal Cafe. Go on, have a cuppa.

Easter Sunday: I am the Bread of Life

2010-04-03T23:09:00.000-07:00

I AM the Bread of Life,

All who eat this Bread will never die.

I AM God's love revealed,

I AM broken that you might be healed.

All who eat of this heavenly Bread,

All who drink this cup of the covenant

You will live forever, for I will raise you up.

I AM the Bread of Life,

All who eat this Bread will never die

I AM God's love revealed,

I AM broken that you might be healed.

No one who comes to Me shall ever hunger again,

No one who believed shall ever thirst.

All whom the Father draws shall come to Me,

And I shall give them rest.

I AM the Bread of Life,

All who eat this Bread shall never die.

I AM God's love revealed,

I AM broken that you might be healed.

As arranged by John Michael Talbot.

A Better Resurrection: Christina Rossetti

2010-04-03T10:17:00.000-07:00

A Better Resurrection by Christina Rossetti

    I have no wit, no words, no tears;
        My heart within me like a stone
    Is numb'd too much for hopes or fears;
        Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
    I lift mine eyes, but dimm'd with grief
        No everlasting hills I see;
    My life is in the falling leaf:
       O Jesus, quicken me.
    My life is like a faded leaf,
       My harvest dwindled to a husk:
   Truly my life is void and brief
       And tedious in the barren dusk;
   My life is like a frozen thing,
       No bud nor greenness can I see:
   Yet rise it shall--the sap of Spring;
       O Jesus, rise in me.

   My life is like a broken bowl,
       A broken bowl that cannot hold
   One drop of water for my soul
       Or cordial in the searching cold;
   Cast in the fire the perish'd thing;
       Melt and remould it, till it be
    A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.

"Sapling" 1973 by
Konstantin Vasiliev *
[1942-1976]

Words for Good Friday

2010-04-02T20:35:00.000-07:00

Move me
Move me to the brink
with your resignation
and grimace as
the thorns dig a little
deeper
and the reed bites a little
harder
and the splinters jab
like knives in your hands
from that rough hewn
cross you are made
to haul around town

There's nothing I can do
but walk along by you
and I'll walk with you
as far as I can
or have the courage to...
it's not easy, but I
should be willing to try

After all, you are the one
to die for us all

Where's the payback?
Is there any?

You slow down and
your eyes turn to mine
as you breathe as if in
labour, you utter

"Live well, love each other,
talk to my Father, He'll
listen;
somehow it will all be good."

And with that you pick up
the pace as much as you can
and I watch as you struggle
up the street, ready to do
this thing you are called to do.

And I weep at my inadequacy
to carry on, to carry you on...
I fall over the edge,
that brink that envelopes me
as the veil is rent in two...

Women in The Garden...Maundy Thursday

2010-04-01T19:08:00.000-07:00

I am a woman,
a woman
standing in the garden
with the Boys, over there.

I am neither planting, pruning
or scything
but I am praying,
waking and uttering
scrapings of words.

Words
murmured words
words of pleading,
that's what we hear
uttered to the Invincible One.

He, who has this Son,
HIm, over there kneeling
by that rock where
the Boys are nearby.

The women with me,
we are set apart a ways
but we can hear
His murmured words
of discourse intent,
and sometimes loud
barks, and then
quiet
for a while.

Those Boys,
they sleep and nod
stupidly when they
are supposed to be
around Him like a hedge
made of prayer and
mutual silence,
but most of all, love.

Yet no, they snore and snuffle
scratch and sniff in their
fevered dreams,
but He does not sleep,
can't because this
is no time for sleeping,
not for Him.

We girls, we watch and wait
with Him
in the night watches
in the open of the garden
where the indigo sky
encloses us roughly
against the grass and thistles.

We girls, we are made of
sturdier stuff
from the cooking, the
baking, the making,
of others all the day long,
working and doing,
and often as we do we
pray and are filled like
new skins of wine, of
pressed oil, of soft
bread.

Our wakefulness
is here to stay,
unlike those Boys,
them, over there.

If only they knew
how they will lose
sight of Him as they
lose sight of the stars
in their courses above
as the candle burns
the hours away.

And He will flame out
as all falling stars do
but only for while...we
can see it coming

In the silence we gather
our hands together,
we girls and keep our
eyes upon Him and
with Him we are,
inside our hearts will
we will grieve for
grief yet to come.

He knows, this Jesus,
that's why the soft words
melt into hard barks of
twisting hands and
pursed lips of a struggling
Man, Man Divine.

A little wind comes up now
gentle but steady and It
seems to have a purpose
known only to Itself
as it moves over Him
kneeling at that rock,
hands wringing and grasping
as his locks move on this
wind and softly buffet his
face, fluttering the wings
of a night moth alight upon
His shoulder, which is heaving.

We gather our hair veils about
our heads a little tighter,
a little closer around our hearts
so they stay and will not
engender stern looks from
the Boys should they waken
which is doubtful.

The dawn will come
and with it, soldiers
and uppity old men,
and servants, scowling.

There is not much else
we girls can do but stand
and watch our Lord be
taken away.

Our hearts will ache
but we are only women
in their sight, yet we
are so much more...

We have laid hold of His
Word, of His promises
of kingdom come,
how it will be done on
earth as in heaven.

Jesus, remember us
when You come into
Your kingdom,
the anointing of Your
feet with oil, how our
glory faded before Yours
in the foreshadowing.

May we receive what was
once whole, and now
broken, our Lord,
for we shall see You,
after Abba Father,
after all the company
of heaven, in another
garden on a morning
not unlike the one coming
but brighter.

And before the Boys do...

But it comes before that,
the hard time
when we will weep
and anoint the shell of
this Man
carrying the seed of love
for the blooming of
the world, and first we
will touch the sheaf of
finest wheat, the risen
Body and drink of Your
Voice, living water.

It is time now, Master,
Loving Lord.
We girls,
we are with You
in Your darkest hours.

Catherine

Of the Donkey, Gethsemane, and Mary Oliver

2010-03-29T21:26:00.000-07:00

Gifts to us by Mary Oliver from her book "Thirst" These pieces of poetry are so appropriate for Holy Week that I had to share them with all of you...

The Poet Thinks about the Donkey

On the outskirts of Jerusalem
the donkey waited.
Not especially brave, or filled with understanding,
he stood and waited.

How horses, turned out into the meadow,
leap with delight!
How doves, released from their cages,
clatter away, splashed with sunlight!

But the donkey, tied to a tree as usual, waited.
Then he let himself be led away.
Then he let the stranger mount.

Never had he seen such crowds!
And I wonder if he at all imagined what was to happen.
Still, he was what he had always been: small, dark, obedient.

I hope, finally, he felt brave.
I hope, finally, he loved the man who rode so lightly upon him,
as he lifted one dusty hoof and stepped, as he had to, forward.

Gethsemane

The grass never sleeps.
Or the roses.
Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until morning.

Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept.

The cricket has such splendid fringge on its feet,
and it sings, have you noticed, with its whole body,
and heaven knows it never sleeps.

Jesus said, wait with me. And maybe the stars did, maybe *
the wind wound itself into a silver tree, and didn't move,
maybe
the lake far away, where once he walked as on a
blue pavement,
lay still and waited, wild awake.

Oh the dear bodies, slumped and eye-shut, that could not
keep that vigil, how they must have wept,
so utterly human, knowing this too
must be a part of the story.

*Christ in Gethsemane by artist Michael D Obrien
______________________

...come and wait with me in the "garden" with our Lord this Maundy Thursday night and early Good Friday morning, in the sanctuary of Trinity Episcopal Church, Ashland, Oregon. I will be there in the night watches...

Catherine

A poem for Palm Sunday...

2010-03-28T12:33:00.000-07:00

...written by Terri Cole Pilarski+ aka Mompriest from her blog Seeking Authentic Voice...too good not to share:

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Sunday Prayer: Palm/Passion Sunday

God of all hopefulness, God of my life
On this holy day of Palms and Passions
and through this
the holiest of weeks,
when our Lenten journey
finds its completion
through pain
sorrow
despair
illness
losses of all kinds,
through fear
anger
hatred
vitriol
and finger pointing.

Through a self-examination of
all the ways we work against you -
against your hopes and dreams
for creation
against your love poured out
in flesh and blood -
we hang our heads and bow our hearts
seeking your forgiveness
yearning for your guidance
desiring your compassion.

Fill us we pray, with the ability to
turn to you, kneeling before your grace
open our spirit that we may take you in
let you in
receive you in
taking You in..

Into our hearts and minds and souls
Let you in
that we might turn to you,
return to you,
be transformed in you,
through you, by you,
for you.

Transformed
once more,
this day, this week,
into a new self,
me, you.

May we become a new people,
a gentle people,
a people of
love and compassion,
born anew from our
deepest sorrow
through the breadth of your
forgiveness
and love.

And then, may we do likewise.
Forgive.
And, love.
Amen.

Crossposted on RevGalBlog Pals and RevGal Prayer Pals

An Excerpt from Eliot's "Ash Wednesday"...

2010-02-17T06:23:00.000-08:00

The following is an excerpt from the poem Ash Wednesdau by T.S. Eliot. More than fitting for this sobering day...

VI.

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

Let my cry come to Thee....

The First Verb: Hildegard

2010-02-15T21:02:00.000-08:00

The Holy Spirit animates
all, moves
all, roots
all, forgives
all, cleanses
all, erases
all, our past mistakes, and then
puts medicine on our wounds.

We praise the Spirit of incandescence
for awakening
and reawakening
all
creation.

Hildegard of Bingen

Definitely a Lenten meditation. Wishing everyone a meaningful yet lovely Lent.

The artwork is by a young Russian woman artist known as Inna Deriy. See more of her work here.

Haitian quake was predicted, some experts say: The Turf War

2010-01-25T09:28:00.000-08:00

HIGH TECH: Satellite imaging showed fore-shock of 2002 Alaska quake.

By ALBERTO ENRIQUEZ
Special to the Daily NewsNed Rozell

Published: January 24th, 2010 09:36 AM
Last Modified: January 24th, 2010 09:36 AM

In the aftermath of the massive Haitian earthquake on Jan. 12, officials have repeated the long-held opinion that "earthquakes cannot be predicted."

That's no longer true.

New electromagnetic techniques (EM) are detecting ominous signs of a killer earthquake's approach. American and French satellites independently detected signs of danger over Haiti three and four days before the earthquake struck, killing an estimated 200,000 people.

But pre-seismic EM sensing is only funded in a limited research capacity...

Read the rest of the revealing story here: http://www.adn.com/news/environment/earthquakes/story/1107324.html

Misery politicized. It's all about control of information regardless of the situation. How can such a price be placed on human lives. Three days warning, is all it would have taken to prevent so much death and misery. Shame on those who withheld information that could have prevented so much tragedy.

I am still without my distribution lists so kindly pass this article on to others. After all, we know that knowledge IS power, for good or ill.

Get the word out...

2010-01-14T20:20:00.000-08:00

...that I have posted a new entry. My distribution lists were vaporized by my PC when it's operating system crashed and left me without access to Outlook where my mail and address book resided. I am hoping to get the O/S restored at some point so I can upload everything to Gmail and get my stuff back. I know the data is safe, just the O/S is problematic at this time. So I write and post to you from a friend's eMac!

Kindly spread the word to your blogging and blogger friends and ask them to leave comments and hopefully my usual suspects will send me an email with their address in it so I can reconstitute my distribution lists. Thanks in advance for that!

Catherine

SCOTLAND: Election to decide if Britain will have first female Anglican bishop

2010-01-14T20:13:00.000-08:00

By Trevor Grundy, January 14, 2010

[Episcopal News Service] Britain might soon have its first female Anglican bishop, serving the 38,000-memberScottish Episcopal Church.

The Rev. Alison Peden, aged 57, is one of three candidates for the post of bishop of Glasgow and Galloway. The election is scheduled for Jan. 16.

Observers say that if Peden is elected it is likely to increase pressure on the neighboring Church of England to allow the appointment of women bishops.

"This news is a real boost as it comes at a time when the Church of England is in the process of preparing its own legislation for women bishops," Christina Rees, chairperson of WATCH (Women and the Church) and a campaigner for female bishops, was quoted as saying by The Times newspaper.

Peden, the rector of Holy Trinity Church in Stirling and canon of St. Ninian's Cathedral in Perth, is facing two male rivals for the post of bishop in the Scottish diocese.

They are the Rev. John Applegate, an academic at Manchester University, and the Rev. Gregor Duncan, rector of St. Ninian's Church, Pollokshields, and dean of the Diocese of Glasgow and Galloway.

The candidates were chosen by clergy and lay church members. Under church rules they are not allowed to give media interviews before the election.

Peden is the first woman to be shortlisted in Britain as an Anglican bishop. The General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church voted in 2003 to allow women bishops.

The Scottish election comes a year after the small Lutheran Church in Great Britain consecrated its first woman bishop, the Rev. Jana Jeruma-Grinberga.

WATCH's Rees said she believed that legislation allowing women bishops in the Church of England would probably be presented to its General Synod in July 2010, and that final approval would be given in 2012.

"My great hope in 2010 is that we will finally see good, robust and fair legislation for women bishops coming forward," she told Ecumenical News International.

--------------------------------------------------------------

This is the best news I have heard in a while on the Anglican front. The election is two days away, and whilst this may seem trivial in comparison to the disaster in Haiti, it is also important to this devastated country in that more change for the better for all women and men may come about with more women bishops doing the will and work of God in ways no one could ever have imagined. Long or short term, this is a very important event in the Church. Pray with all your being for the people of Haiti and those trying to help, and pray that God's will shall be seen in this election.

Catherine

CHICAGO CONSULTATION RESPONDS TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

2009-12-07T22:03:00.000-08:00

[and] Asks Archbishop to Reconsider Statement and Silence

CHICAGO, IL, December 7, 2009—The Chicago Consultation issued this statement today from its co-convener, the Rev. Lowell Grisham:

“For weeks the Archbishop of Canterbury has been silent as the Ugandan legislature considers making homosexuality a crime punishable by death. Lambeth Palace has let it be known that it was working behind the scenes to influence the situation because public confrontation would be counterproductive and disrespectful. Yet the election of the Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool, a remarkably qualified gay woman as a suffragan bishop of Los Angeles, incited the Archbishop’s immediate statement of alarm, implying there would be grave consequences unless bishops and standing committees in the Episcopal Church refused to consent to her election.

“Canon Glasspool is a qualified, respected and beloved servant of God whom the Diocese of Los Angeles has discerned has the gifts of the Spirit to help lead their ministry. She is no threat to the work of God or to Jesus’ commandment that we love our neighbor as ourselves. On the other hand, executing gay people and creating a state system of oppression is a gross violation of the spirit of the one who welcomed the outcast to his table. We are as perplexed by the Archbishop’s speedy condemnation of the former as we are by his prolonged silence of the latter.

“We believe that honoring the relationships and ministries of gay and lesbian Christians, is, in the end, the only way in which the Anglican Communion can be faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We hope that when the Archbishop realizes the damage he has done to the Communion’s ministry among gay and lesbian Christians and those who seek justice for them, he will reconsider both the words he has spoken and the words he has not.”

The Chicago Consultation, a group of Episcopal and Anglican bishops, clergy and lay people, supports the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christians in the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion. To learn more about the Chicago Consultation, visit www.chicagoconsultation.org.

HEADLINE: Canterbury issues statement on Los Angeles' election of openly gay bishop suffragan

2009-12-07T21:53:00.000-08:00

December 06, 2009

[Episcopal News Service] Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has issued a statement in response to the Diocese of Los Angeles' Dec. 5 election of an openly gay candidate, the Rev. Mary Douglas Glasspool, as bishop suffragan.

Glasspool is one of two bishops suffragan elected during the Los Angeles diocese's Dec. 4-5 convention in Riverside, California. The Rev. Canon Diane Jardine Bruce became the first woman elected a bishop in the Los Angeles diocese on Dec. 4. Both elections must receive consents from a majority of bishops exercising jurisdiction and diocesan Standing Committees within 120 days from the day after notice is sent to them.

An ENS article about Glasspool's election is available here. An ENS article about Bruce's election is available here.

The full text of Williams' Dec. 6 statement follows:

"The election of Mary Glasspool by the Diocese of Los Angeles as suffragan bishop-elect raises very serious questions not just for the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the Communion as a whole.

The process of selection however is only part complete. The election has to be confirmed, or could be rejected, by diocesan bishops and diocesan standing committees. That decision will have very important implications.

The bishops of the Communion have collectively acknowledged that a period of gracious restraint in respect of actions which are contrary to the mind of the Communion is necessary if our bonds of mutual affection are to hold."

Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, C of E.

_____________________________________

That he wrongly condemns the Constitution and Canons, the polity of our Church in America, and overtly threatens us is bad. What is worse is that he fails in every way as a Christian and leader by NOT condemning the persecution of gay Christians in Uganda, who now face the death penalty for their "manner of life", and their friends and family members face prison time for knowing about them and not reporting them, and for covering up any knowledge of a friend or relative's "manner of life." Rowan Williams, you have failed in every way to be Christ-like and to love your neighbor as yourself.

HEADLINE: Los Angeles women bishops' elections create 'bit of a wave'; tsunami of reaction, expectations

2009-12-07T21:49:00.000-08:00

Election raises issues of diversity, consents, covenants

By Pat McCaughan, December 07, 2009

[Episcopal News Service] Los Angeles diocesan Bishop Jon Bruno's Dec. 5 acknowledgement that the weekend elections of two women suffragan bishops could create "a bit of a wave" across the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, may have been an understatement.

By Dec. 7 a flood of local, national and international support, praise, skepticism and criticism had poured in, as well as speculation about the impact of the elections of the Rev. Canon Diane Jardine Bruce and, more specifically, the Rev. Canon Mary Douglas Glasspool, an openly gay and partnered woman, on local and global church relations.

Bruno addressed such concerns, as well as those about diversity, during a meeting with reporters at the conclusion of the Dec. 4-5 "Faith & Our Future" convention held at the Riverside Convention Center in Riverside, California.

"The people of Los Angeles elected these women," said Bruno. "The people of the Diocese of Los Angeles said ... we want at least one woman. Well, they got double their wish."

A majority of the 680 clergy and lay delegates attending the two-day gathering on Dec. 4 elected Bruce on the third ballot from among a field of six candidates. A well-known Los Angeles area priest, she had served for nine years as rector of St. Clements by-the-Sea Church in San Clemente, the southernmost tip of the six-county diocese. She became the first woman bishop in the diocese's 114-year history and the 16th woman elected bishop in the Episcopal Church.

A day later, Glasspool was elected after seven rounds of balloting, during which an admittedly "disconcerted" Bruno challenged the tense, almost somber gathering, "to look toward the future and have vision," and to "listen to the Holy Spirit." The field of candidates, narrowed to five after Bruce's election, was narrower still when Glasspool and another candidate, the Rev. I. Martir Vasquez emerged as frontrunners. Ballot results are available here.

Supporters and well-wishers, from Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, consecrated the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church in 2003, to Bishop Eugene Sutton of Maryland, where Glasspool has served as canon to the bishops for the past eight years, praised her election.

"The people of the Diocese of Los Angeles have elected two extraordinarily gifted priests to serve them as suffragan bishops. Rightly so, the people of Los Angeles have not let current arguments over homosexuality or threats to 'unity' impair their choosing the best persons for these ministries," Robinson wrote on the diocesan website. "I am delighted over the elections of Diane Bruce and Mary Glasspool and, upon consent by the wider church, look forward to welcoming them both into the House of Bishops."

Sutton called Glasspool's election, "a great day in the life of the Episcopal Church. As canon to the bishops since 2001, Mary has distinguished herself as a faithful and gifted priest who is well prepared to assume the mantle of leadership incumbent upon a bishop."

Diversity: 'we're not as vanilla as we seem'
Diversity was an issue for some delegates who supported Vasquez's candidacy, according to the Rev. Altagracia Perez, rector of Holy Faith Church in Inglewood, California. About 30 of the diocese's 149 congregations worship in Spanish, Bruno said. Futurists predict potential church growth among Latinos, who represent nearly one-half of the Los Angeles area population.

Vasquez is vicar of. St. George's, Hawthorne, a multicultural congregation of about 85 average Sunday attendance that includes Anglo, Latino, Nigerian and Palestinian members.

"We're not as vanilla as we look," Bruno said. "We have a new student of Spanish," he said referring to Glasspool. He is fluent in Spanish, as is Bruce, who also speaks Mandarin and Cantonese. "What we've done is bring great skills of administration and excitement and advancement and lifting people up for who they are. This diocese has been only one thing today, blessed."

Glasspool told reporters following her election that she felt the Holy Spirit empowered convention to go beyond "superficial characteristics and boxes in which we put people, to really look at individual people and assess the needs of the diocese and pair them with the gifts and skills that Diane and I each bring. In that sense, in all ways, we are moving to a point where we can look beneath the skin color and any single characteristic and really rejoice in the wholeness of every individual person."

Perez agreed, saying she was "surprised and pleased" at the election outcome even though "I would have preferred there be more of a balance" racially or ethnically. She was surprised because she "didn't think convention would elect two women. But, I really did feel that the Holy Spirit was at work. People became very focused on what would be good for the diocese in terms of skills and experiences, rather than acting out of any fear.

"God casts out fear, and we did what we thought was best without being afraid of people being upset with us," she said, referring to the Anglican Communion. "God and the Gospel take precedence over the church."
Consent processes

The Chicago Consultation, a group of Episcopal and Anglican bishops, clergy and laity supporting full inclusion for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people, heralded the Los Angeles elections.

In a Dec. 7 statement, they called upon Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to reconsider his initial statement about the election, interpreted by some as a call to standing committees in the other 109 dioceses of the Episcopal Church and its bishops with jurisdiction to withhold their consent to Glasspool's consecration.

Under the canons of the Episcopal Church (III.11.4), a majority of bishops exercising jurisdiction and diocesan Standing Committees must consent to the Glasspool's ordination as bishop within 120 days of receiving notice of the election.

Williams had said that her election "raises very serious questions, not just for the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the communion as a whole."

He added that the rest of the confirmation process "will have very important implications. The bishops of the communion have collectively acknowledged that a period of gracious restraint in respect of actions which are contrary to the mind of the communion is necessary if our bonds of mutual affection are to hold."

The Chicago Consultation questioned Williams' public silence "as the Ugandan legislature considers making homosexuality a crime punishable by death" while working instead behind the scenes to influence the situation. Yet, he issued "an immediate statement of alarm, implying there would be grave consequences unless bishops and standing committees in the Episcopal Church refused to consent to her [Glasspool's] election."

Glasspool, the statement added, "is no threat to the work of God or to Jesus' commandment that we love our neighbor as ourselves. We believe that honoring the relationships and ministries of gay and lesbian Christians is, in the end, the only way in which the Anglican Communion can be faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ."

Bruno told the reporters he "will work my fingers to the bones, dialing telephones to talk to people and let them know what wonderful candidates we have here," should an attempt be made to stall Glasspool's consecration.

Withholding consents "would be a violation of the canons of this church," he added. "At our last General Convention, we said we are nondiscriminatory. They just as well might have withheld their consents from me because I was a divorced man and in my case, it would have been more justified than withholding them from someone who has been approved through all levels of ministry and is a good and creative minister of the Gospel."

Bruno was referring to Resolution D025 in which the 76th General Convention said in July that God's call to ordained ministry is "a mystery which the church attempts to discern for all people through our discernment processes acting in accordance with [its] Constitution and Canons ..."

He added: "I would remind the Episcopal Church and the House of Bishops they need to be conscientious about respecting the canons of the church and the baptismal covenant to respect the dignity of every human being. To not consent in this country out of fear of the reaction elsewhere in the Anglican Communion is to capitulate to titular heads."

Anglican covenant and communion partners
The Rev. Ephraim Radner, professor of historical theology at the University of Toronto's Wycliffe College, told ENS he wasn't surprised by Glasspool's election and that he wouldn't be if she receives the required consents for her planned May 15, 2010 consecration.

What will surprise the former Colorado conservative is if the Episcopal Church will sign the latest version of the Anglican covenant.

Glasspool's election and consecration will convey the impression that not just the Los Angeles diocese but "the Episcopal Church as a whole is not interested in participating in the processes that have been so painfully put together over the last six years" to consult and to exercise restraint and be accountable to one another as outlined in the proposed Anglican covenant, he said.

He added that, if the Episcopal Church signs the yet-to-be completed covenant, it will be seen as "utter disingenuousness." The election of an openly gay partnered bishop "establishes in a formal way the Episcopal Church's decision not to be a part of this process," he added.

The Anglican Consultative Council, at its May meeting in Jamaica, postponed asking the Anglican Communion's 38 provinces to consider adopting the latest version of the Anglican covenant, the Ridley Cambridge Draft. The ACC, the communion's main policy-making body, said instead that it wanted the draft's Section Four to get more scrutiny and possibly be revised.

A small working group, appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, met in November to consider Section Four. The group's recommendations will be presented to the communion's Standing Committee for consideration in London Dec. 15-18. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori is a member of the Standing Committee and will be attending the December meeting.

It remains for the Standing Committee to ask the communion provinces to decide if they can each agree to abide by its terms. It is expected that the soonest the Episcopal Church could consider such a request would be the next meeting of General Convention in the summer of 2012.

Radner said "the real issue is what's going to happen with the covenant and if the covenant comes out in a way that is not intact and more loosely ordered in its procedures, I think we will have a major split in the communion that will be permanent and the vast majority of the Global South and perhaps of the smaller western churches will go do their [own] covenant. The Episcopal Church doesn't really have a role any more in the covenant as far as I can tell."

Perez, 48, rector of Holy Faith in Inglewood, California for seven years, said a split "would be very sad. But," she added, "After 30 years of having this conversation if I have to choose, I'll choose what the Holy Spirit is doing and trust that the church will catch up. It wouldn't be the first time that's happened. That's where we were with slavery, and the church will catch up when it catches up."

Should Glasspool receive the necessary consents, she would become the second female bishop in Los Angeles and the 17th in the Episcopal Church but not the first openly gay female bishop in Christianity.

On Nov. 8 the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden ordained Eva Brunne, 55, as bishop of the Diocese of Stockholm. Brunne is the first Church of Sweden bishop to live in a registered homosexual partnership, the Uppsala-headquartered church said.

Sweden has allowed same-gender civil unions since 1995 and on May 1 of this year began recognizing same-gender marriages after passing a gender-neutral marriage law. In late October, the Church of Sweden voted to allow its ministers to perform such marriages.

The Episcopal Church is about to enter into a dialogue with the Church of Sweden that could lead to a full communion agreement similar to the one the church has had with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America since January 2001. The July 8-17 meeting of the Episcopal Church's General Convention called for that dialogue, via Resolution A076.

Bruce and Glasspool will succeed Bishop Suffragan Chester Talton and Bishop Assistant Sergio Carranza, who are retiring after 19 and seven years service, respectively, to the diocese.

With 70,000 members in 148 congregations, the Diocese of Los Angeles includes all of Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, and part of Riverside County.

More information about all nominees is available here.

-- The Rev. Pat McCaughan is Episcopal News Service correspondent for provinces VII and VIII. The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg, ENS national correspondent, and Matthew Davies, ENS editor and international correspondent, contributed to this report.

Break and diocesan reflection

2009-12-02T06:54:00.001-08:00

I will be taking an extended break from blogging or any attempt to blog. I have a lot on my plate right now and nothing left with which to try to formulate a post.

I will make one observation in regard to the results of my Diocese's election of Rev. Hanley. That observation is this: I am disappointed and hope I am wrong in saying that I think we have not chosen the best applicant for leading our diocese into a future of positive change. I had hoped we had learned a lesson from the ill-chosen Bishop Itty but after all the process of chosing candidates for this most recent election, I see that we did not learn what we should have. I wish him well and hope we will not regret the outcome. Our bishop should have been one familiar with the Northwest and had actually spent time growing up here and serving here. We did not chose this person, probably because the usual folks didn't want a woman as a bishop, which is not progressive at all, something our state is usually known for, but not this year. So that's all I have to say.

Have a good Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanza or whichever holiday you celebrate, or none, if that is the case, then have a beautiful winter season.

Catherine

Diocese of Oregon prepares to elect new bishop

2009-11-17T07:04:00.000-08:00

On Friday, November 20th at diocesan convention, Eugene OR, the Diocese of Oregon will elect a new bishop. You can follow the balloting at the diocesan website here: http://www.diocese-oregon.org/

If you want more information on how the search progressed and who the candidates are, you can visit the Search Committee website at http://www.diocese-oregon.org/bishopsearch/bishopsearch.htm

Please pray for our clergy and lay delegates that they may choose the person most suited to our diocese and its needs, that all wrangling would be laid aside. There is one woman and two men as candidates. There will be a prayer vigil held that day beginning at 8 am for the election at every parish church in the diocese. Please take a moment in your day and join us as we make this historic decision according to God's will and the good sense He/She gave us.

Catherine

FORT WORTH: First woman priest to be ordained Nov. 15

2009-11-16T11:05:00.000-08:00

FORT WORTH: First woman priest to be ordained Nov. 15

By Pat McCaughan, October 28, 2009

[Episcopal News Service] Thirty-three years after the Episcopal Church approved the ordination of women to the priesthood and to the episcopate, the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, Texas, is following suit.

The Rt. Rev. Edwin F. (Ted) Gulick Jr., bishop of Kentucky and provisional bishop of Fort Worth, is set to ordain the Rev. Susan Slaughter to the priesthood on Nov. 15 at St. Luke's in the Meadow Episcopal Church, where she currently serves as deacon.

Slaughter will become the first woman ordained to the priesthood in the history of the diocese, founded in 1983. She will also become the first woman to serve as rector of a diocesan parish -- also at St. Luke's in the Meadow.

"It is with a deep sense of awe in the mysterious ways of our Lord that I arrive at this moment," Slaughter said recently. "I am filled with gratitude toward those persons, lay and clergy, who have encouraged and supported me over the years. St. Luke's in the Meadow has been especially supportive and has helped me discern more clearly my true vocation."

It's been a long time coming for Slaughter, who was introduced to the Episcopal Church when she was eight years old, by two friends. She soon convinced her parents and brothers to join her.

"I loved the liturgy, joined the junior choir and was confirmed at age 12," she recalled recently. "I was the first in my family to attend and be confirmed in the Episcopal Church."

A graduate of Bellaire High School, she earned a bachelor's degree from Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, and taught speech pathology and audiology. She earned a master of education degree in guidance and counseling from North Texas State University in Denton.

Although she sensed a call to ordained ministry in the 1980s, diocesan bishops declined to ordain women to the priesthood, forcing her to "push aside the sense of call," she said.

She became an active lay minister at her home parish, St. Alban's Episcopal Church in Arlington. There, she developed a Stephen Ministry, training lay people to provide one-on-one compassionate listening and care to hurting people within the congregational setting. She was also a lay reader and server, led women's Bible studies and taught adult Christian education.

Eventually, she completed seminary training at the Anglican School of Theology in Dallas but still found the priesthood elusive.

Former Bishop Jack Iker told her she'd have to leave the diocese to be ordained to the priesthood. Unable to relocate, eventually she returned to Iker believing that her call must be to the diaconate. He ordained her a deacon on October 12, 2002.

For the past several years, she has served as deacon at St. Luke's and is credited with helping to stabilize the parish after the November 2008 departure of Iker and other diocesan leaders. Citing theological differences over the ordination of women and gays, they disaffiliated from the Episcopal Church and realigned with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone.

The continuing diocese reorganized in February 2009 with Gulick as provisional bishop. Under his leadership two women priests have been licensed to serve in the diocese, the Rev. Maurine Lewis, who serves displaced congregations, and the Rev. Melanie R. Barbarito, a pastoral associate at All Saints Church in Fort Worth.

Finally, Slaughter, who is currently enrolled in a master of theological studies program at Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, will realize her call to ordained priesthood.

The Fort Worth diocese was formed from the western part of the Diocese of Dallas. The founding bishop, A. Donald Davies, and his successors, Clarence C. Pope and Iker, all left the Episcopal Church over women's ordination.

At least 15 women seeking ordination to the priesthood left the diocese during their collective tenure, according to Katie Sherrod, diocesan communications director. They have been invited "home" for Slaughter's ordination.

Slaughter has seven grandchildren. She was widowed in 2007 after 28 years of marriage to Jerry Slaughter.

She may be the first -- but is not the last -- woman ordained to the priesthood in the Fort Worth diocese.

The Rev. ClayOla Gitane, also serving as a deacon, will be ordained to the priesthood Dec. 5 at Trinity Church, Fort Worth, by the Rt. Rev. Bavi Edna "Nedi" Rivera, bishop suffragan of the Diocese of Olympia and provisional bishop of the Diocese of Eastern Oregon. It will be the first time a female bishop has performed an episcopal act in the diocese.

Ordination of women in the Episcopal Church began in 1974 when 11 women were irregularly ordained to the priesthood in Philadelphia. Four others were ordained in Washington, D.C., in 1975. The Episcopal Church's General Convention approved women's ordination to the priesthood and episcopate in 1976.

-- The Rev. Pat McCaughan is Episcopal News Service correspondent for provinces VII and VIII and the House of Bishops. She is based in Los Angeles.

May it also be noted that on the same day she was ordained a priest, she was installed at her new parish as rector.

Vatican releases Apostolic Constitution to welcome former Anglicans

2009-11-11T15:43:00.000-08:00

November 09, 2009

[Episcopal News Service] The text of an Apostolic Constitution, that outlines provisions to accept groups of former Anglicans who wish to enter into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, was released Nov. 9 by the Vatican.

The full text of Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus is available on the Vatican website here.

An earlier ENS article, "Vatican proposal to welcome former Anglicans generates mixed reactions, commentary," is available here. An Opinion column by Bill Franklin, "Vatican Apostolic Constitution explained," is available here.

But I thought I was catholic already but not under a human supreme leader, but under Christ the King?

Southern Ohio gets approval for same-gender blessings as dioceses gather for annual sessions

2009-11-11T15:39:00.000-08:00

By Pat McCaughan and Mary Frances Schjonberg, November 11 2009

Episcopal News Service] Authorizing same-gender blessings and welcoming new congregations highlighted decisions in some of the nine Episcopal Church dioceses that held annual policy-making gatherings during the Nov. 6-8 weekend.

Diocese of Southern Ohio Bishop Thomas Briedenthal [former rector of Trinity Episcopal Church Ashland, OR] told the diocese's 135th convention that same-gender blessings could be offered in the diocese beginning on Easter 2010.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori used the occasion of the Diocese of Atlanta's 103rd annual gathering to make a pastoral visit to the diocese. She also sent a video greeting to the 225th meeting of the Diocese of Massachusetts' convention.

Meanwhile, House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson spoke via Skype to the Diocese of Iowa's 157th gathering. Anderson used the Skype software, that allows users to make free video and voice calls, as a demonstration of possible communication techniques as alternatives to face-to-face meetings.

Following is a partial summary of diocesan actions at gatherings during the Nov. 6-8 weekend.

Diocese of Atlanta. In addition to hosting Jefferts Schori for her first pastoral visit to the diocese, delegates welcomed one new parish and another new worshipping community before approving seven resolutions during the 103rd annual council Nov. 6-7 at the Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta.

The newest parish in the diocese, Christ the King in Lilburn, Georgia, is a multicultural congregation that meets in a suburban-Atlanta shopping center. The Church of the Common Ground, the new worship community, is a congregation of homeless people in downtown Atlanta.

Council approved resolutions to support ongoing work opposing and preventing sex trafficking, create a task force on domestic violence, and affirm thriving young adult and campus ministries. Other legislation establishes a Commission on Environmental Stewardship to continue the work of a two-year-old task force and urges congregations to undertake an energy assessment of their buildings in 2010. Delegates also extended the diocese's companion relationship with the Diocese of Rio de Janeiro.

The council approved a $4.6 million diocesan budget for 2010, which represents a 5.4 percent decrease from this year. The budget will be sent to the diocesan executive board for final approval.

The diocese encompasses more than 55,000 communicants in nearly 25,000 households and 95 congregations, additional worshipping communities and chaplaincies.

Photo coverage of the council meeting is available here.

Diocese of Eau Claire. About 77 lay and clergy delegates gathered at Church of the Ascension in Hayward, Wisconsin for the 81st annual convention meeting of the diocese. The Ven. Jeanne Stout, archdeacon for the diocese, said convention approved one resolution concerning renewal of the life of the diocese, which has been without a bishop since Keith B. Whitmore left in April 2008 to become assisting bishop in the Diocese of Atlanta. Among other things, the resolution called for the appointment of a provisional bishop and exploration of "creative strategies for diocesan reorganization to strengthen the diocese's ability to support its parishes pastorally, programmatically, and financially within an ever-changing global context."

"We were blessed to have Bishop Clay Matthews with us on Friday and most of Saturday and he did a grand job with his homily at Eucharist and answering questions about what's going to happen," Stout said. Matthews heads the Office of Pastoral Development of the House of Bishops and consults with dioceses about their processes for electing bishops.

Delegates adopted a $220,000 budget. The diocese represents about 2,200 baptized members worshipping in 22 congregations and an average Sunday attendance of about 950.

Diocese of Iowa. About 215 delegates registered for “Next Generations of Faith,” the 157th annual convention held this year at the Des Moines Marriott Hotel.

Delegates approved resolutions focused on environmental ministry; mission priorities and economic justice. Other resolutions adopted by convention included wide-ranging topics from: addressing the issue of AIDS; making accommodations for people with disabilities; affirming the Episcopal Church's commitment to the Genesis Covenant aimed at reducing green house gas emissions from facilities by a maximum of 50 percent, and adopting the Charter for Lifelong Christian Formation.

Delegates defeated a resolution that urged the beginning of a diocesan, and later a General Convention, process to amend canons to reduce all diocesan deputations to two deputies for both lay and clerical orders.

Diocesan coordinator Anne Wagner said the diocese encompasses 61 congregations plus a new start-up faith community not yet formally organized as a congregation. The diocese represents 10,184 baptized members, according to 2008 figures.

Financial officer Bob Joy said convention adopted a $1,178,787 budget, representing a 12 percent decrease from the previous year.

Diocese of Massachusetts. The diocese's celebration of its 225th year spilled out of Trinity Church into a big white tent pitched on Boston's Copley Plaza.

Spanning the history of the diocese, worship began on Nov. 7 with Morning Prayer from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and concluded with Holy Eucharist featuring music and prayers from numerous contemporary sources, readings in many voices and languages and liturgical dance.

A benefit auction and square dance in the big tent on the evening of Nov. 6 raised just more than $20,000 for the diocese's young adult intern programs.

To celebrate his 15th anniversary as bishop, the Rt. Rev. M. Thomas Shaw, SSJE, joined about 150 youth and their adult mentors for a Nov. 7 afternoon rally in the tent. Shaw has advocated for the full inclusion of children and youth in the ministry of the church.

"Remember that you are older than he is," Jefferts Schori quipped in a video greeting congratulating the diocese and Shaw on their respective anniversaries.

In lieu of an address, Shaw gave a series of three meditations focused on the Gospel of John that emphasized love and sacrifice for the sake of community.

"People tell me that about all I ever talk about is community. And it's true. It's true because I believe that in community we have the most profound dynamic experience of God," he said. "I believe it's where we find our deepest transformation. And ultimately I think it's from community that we're given the gift of hope which fires our serving in the world."

The meditations included personal testimony from young adult intern program members Jason Long and Waetie Kumahia on how their lives have been transformed by their experiences of living and serving with others in Christian community.

A proposal presented to the gathering to re-shape the diocese's 10-year "Inviting, Forming, Sending, Serving" mission strategy, now in its sixth year, includes a plan to dedicate St. Luke's and St. Margaret's Church in the Allston neighborhood of Boston as a home for young adult ministry, leadership development initiatives and an experimental worship community plant. The Diocesan Council and Standing Committee will take action on that proposal at a joint meeting on Nov. 12.

The convention adopted two resolutions without amendment, with little discussion and with strong majorities.

One responded to last summer's General Convention Resolution C056 allowing for 'generous pastoral response' in states such as Massachusetts where same-gender marriage is legal. The diocesan resolution expresses the convention's hope that Shaw will permit clergy to sign marriage licenses and pronounce marriages "for any couple that is legally eligible for marriage in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts."

The other resolution continues the diocese's efforts to come to terms with the Episcopal Church's complicity locally in the institution of slavery.

The convention also approved a balanced budget of $6.4 million for 2010, which is $531,000 less than the 2009 budget. The budget maintains the diocese's 0.7 percent commitment to relief and development efforts in Africa, as well as full financial support of the Episcopal Church. And, it reflects assessment reductions for 60 percent of parishes through a newly simplified formula.

Text of resolutions and final actions are available here.

Photos from Nov. 6 events are available here and Nov. 7 here.

Diocese of Nebraska. The 142nd annual council met under the theme "One in Christ, one in Love, one in Mission" at the Church of Our Savior and the Sand Hills Convention Center in North Platte, Nebraska.

Diocesan Administrator Nancy Nichols said delegates adopted a $665,000 budget, representing a 1.6 percent increase over 2009.

Among other business, the council approved resolutions requiring anti-racism training for all diocesan committee and commission members before or within a year of taking office, supporting the Earth Charter and the Anglican Communion's Five Marks of Mission.

Delegates also approved an amended resolution requesting the 77th General Convention to authorize commemoration of the Rev. Hiram Hisanori Kano in the calendar of the church year. Kano was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1889. Baptized in 1910, he came to the United States in 1916. He was a beet farmer in the Platte River Valley prior to his 1936 ordination to the priesthood. He was arrested on the steps of his church Dec. 7, 1941, the day the Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor. For the next four years, he ministered in five different prisons. After the war he returned to Nebraska. He retired in 1957 and moved to Ft. Collins, Colorado. He died Oct. 24, 1988.

The diocese represents 57 congregations and about 4,800 Episcopalians.

Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania. During the diocese's 99th convention Bishop Sean Rowe laid out a comprehensive mission strategy which centers on transformational leadership and ministry.

Around 160 clergy, delegates, and guests gathered at the Villa Conference Center in New Castle.

Among resolutions passed were minor canonical changes, as well as a resolution on clergy minimum stipends. Information about the resolutions and other convention news is available here.

Diocese of Rochester. Rochester Bishop Prince Singh told the 78th meeting of the diocese that "saints of Rochester may have been stunned by the economic downturn of the recent past, but have not been paralyzed by it."

He urged the diocese to say "enough to watching congregations hemorrhage and slowly trickle out their life; either because they rely too heavily on their endowments to buy them some hospice time or because they are too tired to retool and vision into the future," and enough to high dropout and crime rates in Rochester, and enough to the belief "that our rural mission fields are barren and hence only deserve a 'welfare' approach to sustain an Episcopal presence."

The bishop called for task force to explore where to plant new congregations and to re-examine the diocese's apportionment formula.

No other information about the gathering's decisions was available. The diocese includes just more than 10,000 active baptized members in 51 congregations.

Diocese of Southern Ohio. Each deanery in the diocese was invited to create a video conveying how they "Let Your Light Shine," the theme for the 135th annual convention meeting in Sharonville, a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio.

In making his announcement about same-gender blessings, Breidenthal invited congregations and clergy to engage in conversation about his decision while liturgies and policies are designed. He also noted that clergy would not be obligated to perform blessings.

Through the aid of a diocesan fund, Southern Ohio Bishop Suffragan Ken Price -- originally expected to serve one-third of his time in the diocese and two-thirds time as provisional bishop of Pittsburgh -- will be able to serve full-time in Pittsburgh, according to Richelle Thompson, diocesan communications officer. The Procter fund will help supplement Price's salary to allow him to spend the additional time in Pittsburgh, she said.

"It's a really interesting way of helping each other with the gifts we have, of spreading them around to support not just our own diocese but seeing the church as one global church and helping each other," Thompson said.

Breidenthal also noted that Diocese of Olympia Bishop Suffragan Nedi Rivera is retiring and moving to Cincinnati in February and may assist with visitations while continuing to maintain her duties as provisional bishop of the Diocese of Eastern Oregon.

In convention business, delegates approved resolutions to: encourage local law enforcement officers to relinquish immigration enforcement to federal officials; restrict use of commercially bottled water; begin a year of discernment about entering a companion relationship with the Episcopal Church of Liberia; endorse the Earth Charter; and consider reviewing the process to select members to diocesan council to reflect greater geographic diversity.

Convention adopted a $3,898,505 budget, down about $153,000 from last year's $4,051,090 budget, Thompson said.

The Diocese of Southern Ohio encompasses about 25,000 Episcopalians in 81 congregations.

Diocese of Vermont. Participants in the 177th annual meeting of the diocese passed resolutions to affirm the General Convention's endorsement of the Earth Charter and its call for federal legislation in 2009 guaranteeing adequate healthcare and insurance for every citizen. Also related to General Convention, the diocesan gathering commended to its members the Charter for Lifelong Christian Formation for implementation over the next three years. That resolution echoed a call from General Convention for such efforts.

The diocesan convention also called for a continuation of the diocese's five-year-old strategic planning effort.

Bishop Tom Ely based his annual address in an imaginary reply to a voice message left for him during this past Holy Week that suggested the caller could help him find a buyer "interested in your type of business there in Vermont."

More convention information is available here.

The diocese includes close to 8,100 active baptized members in 48 congregations.

--The Rev. Pat McCaughan is Episcopal News Service correspondent for provinces VII and VIII and the House of Bishops. The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is Episcopal News Service national correspondent. Diocesan communicators Vanessa Butler (Northwestern Pennsylvania), Nan Ross (Atlanta) and Tracy J. Sukraw (Massachusetts) contributed to this story.

A poem by Mary Oliver to share...

2009-10-14T22:41:00.000-07:00

I thank my new friend Martha Phelps-Cotton for sharing this gem tonight as she recovers from the flu, and as she thinks of her son Reid, far to the north, still progressing after his chemotherapy for AML [acute myeloid leukemia]. That Martha feels or has the inner strength to share is amazing...so here is the poem that moved her to share it with me and her support crowd, a poem by the gifted yet humble Mary Oliver:

Praying

It doesn't have to be

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try

to make them elaborate, this isn't

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice may speak.

~ Mary Oliver ~

No comment

2009-09-13T17:06:00.000-07:00

Well, that is sad. No comments or constructive suggestions on what to do with those single people in the Church. I do appreciate what was said to me in emails in response to the announcement of the post. But that was all. What are we or I to make of this ennui?

It causes me to not have anything to say. The silence says it all. It tells me no one cares enough to even think about any ideas or voice concerns for the single people in this Church. I am discouraged but I will persevere in one way or another to welcome the stranger, the single stranger who is my brother or sister, who is near or far.

Catherine

photograph by Joshua D Hall

Joy Evermore...

2009-09-10T22:01:00.000-07:00

Hat tip to Kathy Jensen, friend and blogger:

Jesu, my love, my joy, my rest.
Thy perfect love close in my breast
That I thee love and never rest;
And make me love thee of all thinge best,
And wounde my heart in thy love free,
That I may reign in joy evermore with thee.

By Anonymous (15th century)

In peace we pray to you, Lord God:

We pray for all who have died, that they may have a place in your eternal kingdom...

[Silence]

Lord, let your loving-kindness be upon them;

Who put their trust in you...

The Single Soul and the Church

2009-09-07T18:26:00.000-07:00

There has been some talk--on the Internet, Facebook and The Episcopal Church: The Facebook of Common Prayer [see my previous post]--about what the Church has neglected to do for the single person. The unmarried, unpartnered ones, the shut ins, the home bound, the wandering souls that go through life's routines...alone.

What is there for us? I know at my parish there was an attempt at a Stone Soup Supper but for one reason or another it was canceled last fall, or was it winter? It's not like there aren't a lot of us around...we are here, and there, the cities and the towns, from sea to sea, mountain to mountain, plain to plain. We are in large cathedrals and we are in small parish churches. We. Simply. Are.

Many in society think that being single is just the best thing since sliced bread, and don't know why we don't just get married or something. Look at all the advantages that married people supposedly have: longer lives, someone to come home to, tax advantages for their double incomes or the really good single income, ready made dance partners [maybe] and the list goes on. Personally I think its discriminatory to give one group a tax break and not the rest. Why shouldn't single people have the break or something like it? I mean, they are self-supporting, more often than not, so shouldn't we get the break instead of or with the married people who may or may not be getting deductions for children and whatever. I think we should. But here I have wondered into the secular world. Let me take a step back to the Church.

There is a lot of dithering about single groups in churches. Sometimes they lump you into College aged people, or Career-oriented people. And usually but not always, there is the unspoken match.com going on. People don't think of a singles' group as a place to be nurtured spiritually or educationally. No, more often than not people think it's a Christian dating service. Not.

Personally I'd like to see Education for Ministry program or the ability to access EfM for those who wish to take part in and find out what their calling may be or to simply learn more about their faith. It does cost but maybe the church would be willing to help out with some of that for those who could not otherwise afford it.

Book groups are good and their are as diverse in subject and direction as pebbles in a stream. One could go Fiction, or Non-fiction; Theology, Victorian poetry, spiritually focused works, the lives of the saints, mysteries [spiritual and otherwise]. The possibilities are truly endless and varied.

There are always current affairs to discuss in discussion groups for that very purpose. Or we could talk Health Care, or Education, maybe even the possibilities of volunteering in an area of mutual interest.

One of the most important activities I believe single people can engage in is sharing a meal. At a restaurant or mutually prepared, say for Thanksgiving or Christmas, for those with nowhere to go and who would otherwise be sitting in front of TV or window with a microwave turkey dinner. Not feels more comfortable and comforting than to share good food with others who wish for company as much as you do. Holidays are hard on people regardless of station or status. But hearing about the experience of others, they are some of the most depressing times a single person can endure. That's right, enduring the holidays is hard for some, perhaps easier for others but all the same, this alone-ness--especially if it is not welcome--takes a toll mentally, emotionally and physically on the single person.

Single people it is said could benefit from having a companion animal. Well, I agree with that having experienced that first hand. And as great as this would be for those who aren't allergic, it can pose a problem, not just because where they may live but the financial cost of owning and caring for a pet can be prohibitive. And as great as animals are, those who are single, need human companionship and interaction to thrive and be well in body and spirit.

There are, indeed, many other possibilities for gathering single people together under the umbrella of the Church. Half of us haven't met the other half of the single population in our own parish because we attend different services, or we only come on high holy days or just the Wednesday night program or what have you. Gathering us all together in one place, at one time would give us the opportunity to meet every other single person who can attend. Finding out what we have in common--besides being single--and finding common ground. Maybe there is someone who would put on a little financial planning survival seminar for single people only. I would like that especially in this economy.

My mind is swimming with the possibilities of what WE could do if we could meet and talk; think about what we want for ourselves as a group so that maybe twice a month we could count on there being someplace to go to engage our minds and hearts toward God, in one form or another.

Food for thought, definitely. I would like to know your thoughts and invite your comments on this subject. Maybe some of you could share what you do in your church, parish or temple for and with the single man or woman who is looking for more in the "family". I'd love to hear from you.

Catherine

From the "I can't believe it, yet I can" category...

2009-09-02T21:19:00.000-07:00

When we thought things were getting back to a new normal for the Diocese of Fort Worth, what happens? A misogynist and defrocked bishop formerly of Fort Worth raises his silly head against a man of character and imbued with the Spirit. Read on, the ridiculous reality that is Jack Iker, former bishop of the true Episcopal Church, in name only because he never obeyed canon law or resolutions about, among other things, the ordination and equal place of women in the Church...can you tell I feel strongly about this issue among many?

From Episcopal News Service:
FORT WORTH: Breakaway bishop seeks challenge to authority of Episcopal bishop, others

September 9 hearing set in breakaway dispute

By Pat McCaughan

[Episcopal News Service] Attorneys for Jack Iker have asked a Texas court for permission to
challenge the authority of Provisional Bishop Ted Gulick Jr. and the standing committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth.

Iker, who left The Episcopal Church in 2008 but refused to relinquish church property or assets, is responding to a pending lawsuit filed by The Episcopal Church and the continuing Diocese of Fort Worth in April to establish the authority of the new diocesan leadership and to recover diocesan assets, according to chancellor Kathleen Wells.

Full story can be found here.

If you would like to know more about the goings on in the New, Bright and Beautiful Diocese of Fort Worth, join Facebook and go here to follow the reports of Thomas Squiers+ who administers the page. Or go to their website by clicking here.

And here is an upside to the Episcopal Church...well, ANOTHER upside to being in the Episcopal Church, at least in my humble view:

Subject: Sandra Day O’Connor – Another Reason to Be Rather Fond of the Episcopal Church by Chris Yaw, administrator of the Facebook page by the same name, Another Reason to Be Rather Fond of the Episcopal Church. You will need to be a Facebook member to view the page, but believe me, it is worth it.

With all the attention this summer on the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court let’s turn the spotlight on the woman who paved the way - Sandra Day O’Connor.

O’Connor was raised on the family ranch in Arizona. She attended Stanford University for undergraduate and law school. Her gender prevented her from working in law upon graduation so she turned to public service in California then in the Arizona state legislature. In 1975 she was elected judge in Maricopa County. She would be appointed to the Supreme Court six years later by Ronald Reagan, becoming the first woman ever to serve on the high court.

A cradle Episcopalian, O’Connor was married at All Saint’s Episcopal Church in El Paso, Texas. Today she is an active member of the Cathedral Chapter of the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Last month she received the presidential Medal of Freedom alongside another famous Anglican, Desmond Tutu.

O’Connor’s accomplishments are a legacy to her keen mind, hard work and tenacity. And they remind us of the gifts God has given you and me. And just like us Justice O’Connor has found something worthwhile in the Episcopal Church. Perhaps it’s a tradition of intellectual rigor in approaching ethical issues, perhaps it’s the beauty of the liturgy that acknowledges God as the supreme judge, or maybe it’s a place to feel comfortable presenting our gifts as we look for discernment.

Chances are none of us will ever serve on the Supreme Court, but we are called to use our gifts to their highest and best. In what ways has our church helped us discern? Has the Episcopal Church helped clarify a difficult issue in your life? Feel free to stop by the message board and post a comment.
--------------------

See? A happy ending to an otherwise groaning post.

Nominees Announced for 10th Bishop of Oregon

2009-08-07T10:33:00.000-07:00

OREGON: Diocese announces three candidates for bishop

By Mary Frances Schjonberg

[Episcopal New Service] Three priests have been nominated to stand for election as the tenth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon.

They are

* the Rev. Canon Britt Elaine Olson, 49, canon to the ordinary, Diocese of Northern California;

* the Rev. Michael Joseph Hanley, 54, rector, St. Christopher's Episcopal Church, Roseville, Minnesota (Diocese of Minnesota);

* the Rev. Andrew Jeffrey MacBeth, 60, rector, Calvary Church, Memphis, Tennessee (Diocese of West Tennessee).

Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_113101_ENG_HTM.htm

Announcement from the Standing Committee

The members of the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Oregon, meeting at St. Pauls Church, Salem, Oregon, on August 6, 2009 received the list of nominees from the diocesan Search Commitee. These individuals will stand for election as the tenth Bishop of Oregon at the Electing Convention to be held on November 20, 2009, in Eugene, Oregon.

In addition to the nominees selected by the Search Committee who are introduced in the attached document, further nominees may be added by petition. Because background checks are required of all nominees before the election, nominations from the floor may not be made. Furthermore, to allow sufficient time for background checks to be carried out, petitions must be submitted within twenty-one days from the date of this announcement. Anyone wishing to make a petition nomination should download the necessary forms and rules from the Bishop Search web site. Petitions should be addressed to The President of the Standing Committee and must be delivered in hard copy to the Diocesan Office at 11800 SW Military Lane, Portland, OR 97219-8436 no later than Friday, August 28, 2009.

The Standing Committee wishes to thank the members of the Search Committee for their dedicated service to the diocese during the past eight months. They have engaged in a process of spiritual discernment that has led them to believe that the individuals introduced in this announcement are the best possible nominees for the diocese at large to consider as our next diocesan bishop. We are profoundly grateful for their efforts.

Faithfully,
Sharon L. Rodgers, President
for the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Oregon

Liberal Anglicans declare war on conservatives in the Church

2009-08-04T20:05:00.000-07:00

From the Times Online, August 4, 2009, Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent, reports the following "deal breaking" news from the Church of England with wider ramifications in the World Wide Anglican Communion if what the article [here in it's entirety] indicates, comes to pass:

And now, live from England...

Liberals in the Church of England declared war on conservatives including the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams tonight.

Condemning as “flawed” Dr Williams’s recent declaration that the way forward lay in a “twin-track” Anglican Communion, liberals revealed plans to bring in same-sex blessings and gay ordination in England, as has happened in the Episcopal Church in the US.

Their strategy will be to attempt to win the General Synod, the Church’s governing body currently dominated by evangelicals, over to the liberal cause. The opportunity will come next year when the quinquennial elections for a new synod are due.

Liberals from organisations such as Inclusive Church, set up and led by Giles Fraser, the new canon chancellor of St Paul’s, and the long-established Modern Churchpeople’s Union, will attempt to win key seats throughout the Church’s 44 dioceses in what look likely to be the hardest fought elections since the synod came into being in 1970 and which could turn into a battle for the soul of the established Church.

If they take enough of the 400-plus seats in the houses of clergy and laity, the liberals will attempt to bring in total acceptance of homosexuals, overturning all restrictions on their ministry and approving same-sex blessings for civil partnerships and gay ordinations and consecrations.

The liberals in England have made their strongest bid yet for equal treatment for gays in the wake of last week’s acknowledgement by Dr Williams that the Anglican Church is in schism in all but name.

In a response to the decision last month of The Episcopal Church of the US to go ahead with gay consecrations and same-sex blessings, Dr Rowan Williams argued for a “two-track” Communion in which the Church was divided between those with differing theological views of homosexuality. Dr Williams appealed for this to be seen not in “apocalyptic terms of schism and excommunication” but rather as “two styles of being Anglican”.

Organisations representing women priests, lesbian and gay Christians and liberal Roman Catholics and evangelicals have joined forces to condemn Dr Williams’s response as “flawed” and plan their own strategy to effect the same innovations in England as have been made in North America and that have plunged the Anglican Communion into schism.

“We wish to reaffirm our loyalty to the Gospel of Jesus Christ as revealed in the scriptures, our commitment to the Anglican way, and our celebration of and thanksgiving for the tradition and life of the Church of England,” the liberal groups said.

Referring to Dr Williams’s reference to same-sex unions as a “chosen life-style” and his assertion that those who have made such a commitment are analogous to “a heterosexual person living in a sexual relationship outside the marriage bond”, they accused Dr Williams of being inconsistent in the light of past statements he has made, which gave the impression of a more liberal stance.

Signatories to the letter such as Inclusive Church are planning a survey of all gay and lesbian clergy in the Church of England. They believe that in some dioceses, such as London and Southwark, the number may be as high as one in five. They also intend to conduct a survey to find out how many same-sex blessings have been carried out in secret.

“We acknowledge, once again, that there are and always have been many loyal, committed and faithful bishops, priests and deacons — properly selected and ordained — and many lay people who are LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender] or who work alongside LGBT people with delight and thanksgiving,” they said in their statement. “We reaffirm our commitment to working for the full inclusion of all people at all levels of ministry.” The Times has learnt that talks are already under way about forging permanent links between liberal parishes in England and The Episcopal Church, rather as the conservatives have linked up through the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans and related bodies. A new US Episcopal Church outpost in London is also being considered, should any liberal parishes in England wish to affiliate with The Episcopal Church in the US in the way that many conservative US parishes have affiliated with evangelical provinces in Africa and the Southern Cone.

Hat tip to Barbi Click of "Feathers and Faith", key player in Integrity USA Missouri.

"Jimmy Carter Leaves the Southern Baptist Church"

2009-07-21T23:26:00.000-07:00

Huge hat tip to Deputy and now Executive Council member Katie Sherrod of the New Diocese of Fort Worth for this story. Take it away Katie...

Here's a story that seems to have escaped the mainstream media -- Jimmy Carter has left the Southern Baptist Church.

And here's why, as he wrote in an essay for The Age:

At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

and

The truth is that male religious leaders have had -- and still have -- an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world.

Carter faced what many people face in their churches -- the sincere belief that their church has moved away from their core beliefs, or that they themselves have moved beyond their church's core beliefs.

When that happens, people face some choices. They can leave, they can stay and try to change the church, or they can stay and try to change themselves. Carter stayed for many years, trying to change his church.

I took another route. When I began to understand that the Roman Catholic Church's teachings on the role of women were wildly out of whack with my lived experience and my understanding of the teachings of Jesus I realized I had to either leave or violate the integrity of my very being.

I chose to leave, and eventually found the Episcopal Church, which was then beginning the process of trying to live into the Baptismal Covenant in the "new" 1979 Book of Common Prayer. I was attracted to a church that was willing to struggle with the disconnect between "traditional" interpretations of Scripture and the Baptismal promises to "seek and serve God in all people" and "respect the dignity of every human being."

The ordination of women was the presenting issue then, but quickly on its heels came the whole issue of the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the full life and ministry of the church.

Of course, having been received into the Episcopal Church, I found myself in the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, whose bishops refused to ordain women to the priesthood and who soon latched onto the issue of homosexuality as their best bet to keep fear levels so high people would do what the bishops wanted.

Their strategy worked a treat. Misinformation was ladled out like candy at Halloween and soon their demonization of the Episcopal Church led to its logical conclusion. They left the Episcopal Church. [But unlike Jimmy Carter, they are trying to keep Episcopal Church property.]

As for me, I soon realized I could not remain in the Episcopal Church in this place AND remain an ethical person without speaking out against what I saw as wrong. I knew enough about the wider church to know that it bore no relationship to the heretical church described by our former leadership. I was not alone in this.

We laypeople worked hard to try to counter the misinformation, and are still doing so. But you can't undo 30 years of lies in nine months.

That's why in the wake of the most recent General Convention, we see the old fears and lies raising their ugly heads as Episcopalians deal with action at Convention that simply described what has been the canonical reality of our church for many years -- the ordination process is open to all the baptized. That does not confer an automatic right to ordination, but it does mean we cannot arbitrarily block some people from entering the process simply because of who they are.

Convention also asked for the gathering of resources around the whole issue of blessing same gender weddings and unions as a way of dealing with the new reality being faced by at least 30 dioceses who are in states where same gender marriage and unions are legal. This new reality is also being faced by the Church of England, the Episcopal Church of Scotland, and the Anglican Churches of Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Convention asked for collaborative work with our brothers and sisters in the Anglican Communion as we work to find pastoral responses to these new civil realities.

In short, when LGBT Episcopalians can be legally married they want the church to bless those marriages, just as do heterosexual Episcopalians. This resolution essentially asked for resources and study on how the Church will respond to them.

These were only two of the many issues centering on Baptism that were dealt with by the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies, but they are getting the most attention.

They is part of the Episcopal Church's effort to live into the responsibilities and promises of the Baptismal Covenant. It's not easy, because it requires living in a state of some ambiguity. This is very uncomfortable for those folks used to or desiring a top down authoritarian view of Scripture.

This work requires a lot of thinking and self examination on the part of individual church-goers. But that is what I love about the Episcopal Church. Our leaders expect us -- even challenge us -- to think.

After all, God commanded us to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind.

Too often we forget that last part.

Provost Kelvin Holdsworth, St Mary's Cathedral in Glasgow remarks on Gen Con 2009

2009-07-19T21:54:00.000-07:00

"What’s going on in America?" Kelvin Holdsworth inquires...well, he is the Provost of St Mary's Cathedral in Glasgow, Scotland. And he is part of the Scottish Episcopal Church, our brothers and sisters in arms, as it were, in the Anglican Communion. Did you know that the first clergyman in the Episcopal Church USA was ordained by a bishop of the Scottish church, and hence we have Seabury because it was Seabury who was ordained for us, to send us on the road we now find ourselves on. Delightful, the Scottish Church, doing that for us Episcopalians. Do read the following commentary and observations of the good Provost. You will also want to visit his blog called What Is In Kelvin's Head?

There is quite a lot going on in the Anglican world this week. The Church of England Synod was meeting, but did not make much headline news, with the exception that they decided not to shift power from committees and boards to bishops. (ie from laity, clergy and episcopacy to episcopacy).

More interesting is what is going on in the States, where the General Convention of the Episcopal Church is taking place. It only happens every three years and is their great decision making body.

The General Convention has passed a resolution which is getting a lot of press at the moment, Resolution D025. It is worth reading what it actually says and not simply relying on other people’s interpretation. (Including mine!)

The American church seems to have decided that honesty is the best policy. They say simply where they are at with events which have become so toxic within Anglicana. They say that they remain fully committed to the Anglican Communion and also that their methods of selecting bishops remain those of their constitution and canons. This means that those who must consent to Episcopal elections must apply their own conscience when giving consents. The Anglican world cannot simply assume that the American church will reject a bishop who happens to be gay, just because Rowan Williams (or anyone else) asks them to...

Go to Kelvin's blog to read the rest of his narrative regarding General Convention. It's a definite good read.

The Bishop of Kentucky / New Fort Worth on the 76th General Convention

2009-07-19T16:33:00.000-07:00

Bishop "Ted" Gulick Jr is the Bishop of Kentucky and appointed Interim Bishop of the Diocese of Fort Worth Reorganized. Here is his report on Convention from his standpoint and that of his deputations from Kentucky and from New Fort Worth:

A high point of Convention happened on Wednesday, July 14. ... when the House of Deputies ended its morning session with prayers sung in Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions, all three of which trace their roots to Abraham. ... all of whom were part of a group of ecumenical and interreligious guests at General Convention. Each of the singers in turn sang a prayer and then combined their voices into what was called "a sung Abrahamic blessing to this house." As the individual voices soared and then blended together in the vast space of the House of Deputies, it became holy space, blessed space, and everyone in that space was changed, connected with one another in a new way.

Read his entire report.

I'd also like to point out that for the first time in the history of the Diocese of Fort Worth, reorganized or otherwise, that women are coming into their own at last, a privilege denied them by the former and now dissident bishop who has left The Episcopal Church for another Province.

One of the biggest deals was that women were in the deputation and one of them was Katie Sherrod of the blog Desert's Child. When you visit her blog you will meet her and be able to read in her archive the pain and grief of being denied her baptismal rights as a woman in that former diocese. I am happy and proud to say that Katie was elected to Executive Council this Convention...how sweet it is!

The Bishop of Nevada shares his thoughts on Convention

2009-07-18T20:00:00.000-07:00

The Right Reverend Dan Thomas Edwards, 10th Bishop of Nevada, was keeping a blog I didn't know about until today when he posted about it on Facebook. His message is directed toward those in his diocese of course, but really, it's to all of us in the Episcopal Church. He discusses and explains exactly what issues dominated Convention and what Do25 and Co56 really mean to all of us and to those whom it will most greatly effect.

I met +Dan when I was researching Celtic Eucharistic services for my priest--by email--and at the time he was the rector of a parish in THE South ;-). As it turns out he and his wife have on occasion come to Ashland on vacation to attend the Oregon Shakespearean Festival. He said he would try to come again. Of course he was still a parish rector at the time before, less than a month later, he was elected the then new bishop of Nevada, taking the place of ++Katharine who had been elected PB in 2006.

I give to you a preview with a link to the blog itself and his letter to his diocese. And if you continue reading beyond the letter, you will find blog diaries of Convention from said bishop:

"Brothers and sisters in Christ, the 76th Convention of the Episcopal Church is drawing to a close. It has been a benchmark in our common life, the beginning of an exciting new stage in our mission. So many things were accomplished.

Among the most important were: The adoption of the Charter for Lifelong Christian Formation. This charter gives structure and encouragement for our efforts in the Frensdorff School. It marks the Christian life as one of ongoing learning and commits the church to being a learning community.

We endorsed parish partnerships with local schools. Nevada’s developing partnership with Communities in Schools puts us on this track already. It is not acceptable that only 44% of our Nevada children graduate from high school. We can do better.

Several bold steps were taken to strengthen evangelism. The most important for Nevada is a process for training and licensing lay evangelists. I hope every Nevada congregation will have a licensed lay evangelist soon and that they will form a dynamic network for sharing the gospel of Jesus with our neighbors.

We formed a Provincial Partnership with the Church in Brazil, set up a plan for shared mission projects with Anglican churches in the Americas, and strengthened the program of companion diocese relationships. Nevada presently does not have such a relationship but we are negotiating a partnership with the Diocese of Santiago in the Philippines. This is a more important way of being a Communion than formal mechanisms and institutional structures that do not have the human ties of diocese to diocese and parish to parish bonds.

We provided pensions for lay employees, reduced our health insurance costs, reformed the disciplinary process, and passed a budget against all odds.

We had some opportunities to depart from the traditional faith of the church. There were resolutions deleting the word “virgin” from descriptions of Mary in our prayers and authorizing alternative forms of the Baptismal Covenant. We did not do these things. The bishops and deputies were emphatically orthodox..."

Please read the rest of his blog post at Bishop Dan's Blog.

2009-07-17T21:30:00.000-07:00

Anaheim, Ca., July 17, 2009--The Chicago Consultation released this statement from its co-convener, Ruth Meyers, at the close of the 76th General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Anaheim, California. Meyers is a deputy from the Diocese of Chicago and is the Hodges Haynes Professor of Liturgics at Church Divinity School of the Pacific:

During the past ten days, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church has worshiped, prayed, and worked to discern God's will for our common life. Our time together has been filled with generosity, honesty, and the blessings of the Holy Spirit.

The Chicago Consultation is particularly grateful to the four Anglican primates who attended the meeting as our guests: The Most Rev. Philip Aspinall, Primate of Australia; the Most. Rev. Solomon Jongmo Yoon, Primate of Korea; the Most Rev. Idris Jones, Primus of Scotland (retired); and the Most Rev. Nathaniel Makoto Uematsu, Primate of Japan. We are also thankful
for the Convention's many international visitors, guests of House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson, who participated in Chicago Consultation events.

At this General Convention, we have both advanced mission relationships in the Anglican Communion and opened the way for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion to realize fully the promises of their baptism. We celebrate the progress we have made toward full inclusion of all baptized people in God's church and pray that the Spirit will continue to bless the Episcopal Church's mission and relationships across the Anglican Communion.

Now the work begins. Thanks to two key General Convention resolutions, D025 and C056, the Episcopal Church has a fresh opportunity to strengthen Anglican Communion relationships, deepen our understanding of the discernment process by which God calls us all to ministry, and explore together how we can enrich our common life by blessing same-gender unions.

We pray that all Episcopalians, no matter their opinions on specific legislation or issues, will go forward from Anaheim in the spirit of our time together and use the opportunities presented by this General Convention to unite our church in a renewed commitment to Gospel mission.

The Chicago Consultation, a group of Episcopal and Anglican bishops, clergy and lay people, supports the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christians in the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion. We believe that our baptismal covenant requires this.

The Chicago Consultation believes that, like the church's historic discrimination against people of color and women, excluding GLBT people from the sacramental life of the church is a sin. Through study, prayer and conversation, we seek to provide clergy and laypeople across The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion with biblical and theological perspectives that will rid the church of this sin.

Contact: Rebecca S. Wilson, 330-524-2067, rebeccaswilson@sbcglobal.net

###

A New Episcopal Mystery is Afoot... [And it has nothing to do with Convention!]

2009-07-16T06:54:00.000-07:00

There is a new Episcopal [that's right] mysteries series afoot. [low groan from readers]. The hat tip goes to those wonderful clergy women and their friends at The Reverend Gal Blog Pals webpage. This site can lead you to wonderful and beautiful places, excellent writing and godly inspiration, as well as laughter, joy and compassion.

Here is a series I had not heard of. Sure I had heard of and have read most of the crime mystery series involving women Episcopal priests by Michelle Blake and Julia Spencer-Fleming, but this new series will prove "hilarious" and a good read. Here is what the RGBP's had to say about the first book in the series "The Alto Wore Tweed".

And we all need a fun and engaging read during these Convention and Dog Days of summer!

On the last Monday of this month, the RGBP [Reverend Gal Blog Pals] Book Pals will be discussing The Alto Wore Tweed by Mark Schweizer. This is the first in his hilarious Liturgical Mysteries series which includes The Bass Wore Scales, The Soprano Wore Falsettos, The Tenor Wore Tapshoes, etc.

The Alto Wore Tweed introduces you to St. Germaine, North Carolina and Hayden Konig--chief of police and choirmaster extraordinare of St. Barnabus Episcopal Church. He is also a big fan of mystery writer Raymond Chandler, who he tries to imitate. The author is also a church musician and his send-ups of the follies of church life are spot-on. And funny!

How can you resist a book that features a Christmas pageant entitled 'The Penguin of Bethlehem" set amidst the town's Nativity Feud between the Kiwanians and the Rotarians. Or the author's setting of The Moldy Cheese Madrigal?

For extra credit, go to the publisher's website here and you can download the music to the Moldy Cheese Madrigal ("some milk and moldy cheeses we give to the Holy Jesus. Fa-la-la-la etc.") or listen to a performance of it.

Catherine

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. -- Galileo --

"Not Angels, but Anglicans" : Diana Butler Bass

2009-07-15T07:02:00.001-07:00

Christian Episcopal author and speaker, Diana Butler Bass, has posted her thoughts and commentary on The Episcopal Church's General Convention 2009 on her blog Progressive Revival at beliefnet.com. It is a good read as well as a clear perspective on our Church and its' future.

Some readers have asked if I have blogged about DO25 and CO56 yet. Don't know what those are? I highly recommend you find out here what the excitement is about, if you don't already know. You may have to backtrack as developments are constantly happening ALL the time.

If you want a running live commentary and reaction from deputies and attendees at Convention, sign onto Twitter and join the "Twub" at #ecgc, to get second by second reporting from the floor of Convention along with pictures and video clips.

Catherine

General Convention News and Resources

2009-07-10T23:02:00.001-07:00

The other night I had been working on a blog post that would have proven useful and informative but Blogger had other ideas...like obliterate the post Catherine has been working on for over an hour, creating hyperlinks and that sort of thing to help her local church family as well as bloggers and readers across the globe understand and experience what is taking place in Anaheim.

Well, Blogger did not save as its supposed to every so many minutes or seconds and the whole thing--yet unfinished--went poof and was no more. Imagine my chagrin and exasperation...well, that's ok if you can't but it was still there and though I grumped about it earlier today, I am ready to make another attempt using the auto post email address for my blog so that I can write the article as an email and then send it to Blogger for me edit and format for posting. Safer. Less crazy-making for me.

So we begin. Resources and news information sites that will aid and albeit the understanding and knowledge of the mystery of General Convention and what is going on there...

Official and semi-official Episcopal Church pages for news and updates:

The General Convention of the Episcopal Church Official homepage

Episcopal Life Online

Episcopal Cafe, starring The Lead

epiScope

TEC Media Hub//General Convention 2009

Oregon at General Convention 2009

Integrity's Resolution Home Portal: How it's all panning out page

The Daily, a daily Convention newspaper with in-depth stories on all kinds of issues, provided by the Diocese of California. PDF versions are available here.

Episcopal bloggers, both clergy and lay, who are reporting or commenting somewhat daily from GenCon, adding a unique perspective to developments there:

Canterbury Tales from the Fringe by Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire

What the Tide Brings In by The Rev. Ann Fontaine of Wyoming

Telling Secrets by The Rev Elizabeth Kaeton of New Jersey

An Inch at At Time by The Rev. Susan Russell, President of Integrity USA

My Manner of Life by Lisa Fox, writing from Jefferson City, Missouri

Preludium by The Rev Canon Mark Harris from the Diocese of Delaware

The Living Church site

IntegriTV, a video source by Integrity USA

The "New" Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth

The Episcopal Church on Facebook

Entangled States by The Rev. Nicholas Knisely and Friends

Walking With Integrity, homepage for Integrity USA with great coverage of votes

The Episcopal Diocese of California.

...and I am sure there are many more truly reliable blogs and sites to peruse. You can easily find more places to explore for information if you go to the blog's sidebar where the author has listed worthwhile blogs to read.

This is a tense yet exciting time for the Church. Remember to pray without ceasing as every deputy, bishop, all youth, all the baptized need our prayers for wisdom and that above all, God's will be done, in the holy and loving name of our Lord Jesus Christ...

Do I hear an AMEN?

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." -- Galileo--

Different voices to preach at daily worship services during Episcopal Church General Convention 2009

2009-07-05T09:37:00.000-07:00

The Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth in Union with The General Convention

has provided a schedule of who is celebrating and preaching during Convention courtesy of Thomas Squiers of the real Diocese of Fort Worth. You can visit the new diocese by clicking on the link above.

Here is the schedule:

Eight preachers – ranging from the Presiding Officers and the Archbishop of Canterbury to a popular TV correspondent and an internationally-known activist – will be among the many voices at the daily worship services during General Convention 2009 of The Episcopal Church.

Episcopalians will gather this summer for General Convention 2009 (GC09), July 8 – 17 at the A naheim Convention Center in California (Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles).

A theme has been designated for each daily Eucharist, with a bishop of The Episcopal Church as celebrant. Additionally, a different preacher will address the daily theme. The Eucharists will be held daily at 11:30 am (Pacific); Sunday Eucharist will be held at 10 am (Pacific).

The daily themes were developed by the Liturgy and Worship Subcommittee of the GC09 Planning and Arrangements Committee, chaired by the Rev. Canon Carol Wade of the National Cathedral in Washington DC and the Rev. Frank Wade of the Diocese of Washington (DC).

All the sermons will be available for viewing through the innovative Media Hub, presented by the Office of Communication to bring the actions of General Convention to those who are there and those who can’t be there.

Celebrants and Preachers

On Wednesday, July 8, the worship service celebrant and preacher will be the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church.

On Thursday, July 9 the theme is God’s people. The celebrant will be Bishop J. Jon Bruno of Los Angeles , the host diocese for GC09. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will conduct a Bible study during the worship service.

On Friday, July 10 the theme is Unity. The celebrant is Bishop Steve Miller of the Diocese of Milwaukee, co-celebrated by a member of the Moravian clergy. The preacher will be President of the House of Deputies Bonnie Anderson.

On Saturday, July 11 the theme is Hospitality. The celebrant is Bishop Frank Brookhart of the Diocese of Montana; he will be joined by a member of the Methodist clergy. The preacher will be Ray Suarez, senior correspondent for PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and formerly of NPR’s Talk of the Nation.

Sunday, July 12 will be the main General Convention Eucharist and the Ingathering for the United Thank Offering (UTO), a mission and grant-awarding program of The Episcopal Church. Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori will be the celebrant and preacher.

On Monday, July 13, the theme is Domestic Poverty. Celebrant will be Bishop Prince Singh of the Diocese of Rochester with preacher Courtney Cowart, Director of Advocacy and Community Affairs for the Office of Disaster Response in the Diocese of Louisiana.

On Tuesday, July 14 the theme is the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The celebrant is Bishop Rob O’Neill of the Diocese of Colorado who is also the chair of Episcopal Relief & Development. The preacher is Abagail Nelson, Senior Vice President of Programs for Episcopal Relief & Development.

On Wednesday July 15, the theme will be Creation and Environment. The celebrant will be Bishop Greg Rick el of the Diocese of Olympia and preacher will be Bishop Steve Charleston, former Dean of Episcopal Divinity School who offers a focus on environmental issues.

On Thursday, July 16, the theme is Evangelism with celebrant Bishop Wilfrido Ramos of the Episcopal Diocese of Ecuador Central. The preacher is Brian D. McLaren, internationally known speaker and activist and author of important works including Finding Our Way Again, and Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crisis, and a Revolution of Hope.

On Friday, July 17, Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori will be the celebrant and preacher at the closing Eucharist.

The Episcopal Church’s General Convention, held every three years, is the bicameral governing body of the church. General Convention, the second largest legislative body in the world, is comprised of the House of Bishops, with upwards of 200 members, and the House of Deputies, with clergy and lay representatives from the 110 dioceses, at over 700 members.

The Episcopal Church, with 110 dioceses in 15 nations, is a member province of the Worldwide Anglican Communion.

Secret theology committee unmasked: Chicago Consultation makes statement

2009-07-02T07:08:00.000-07:00

The following information was found on Thinking Anglicans, a web blog news source for the World Wide Anglican Communion. The secret committee is indeed revealed. This site will also be an excellent source of up to date information the Convention as well as many blogs in the right hand sidebar of my blog.

Lisa Fox of My Manner of Life has published all but two of the names of the group studying same-sex relationships. For background here is the early June report.

See The Formerly Secret Panel (go to original source for live links)

So here are eight of the ten theologians serving on the panel to study same-sex relationships.

Co-facilitators:

* The Rt. Rev. Joe G. Burnett, Bishop of Nebraska
* Ellen Charry, Princeton Theological Seminary

Members:

* Deirdre J. Good, General Theological Seminary
* Willis Jenkins, Yale Divinity School
* The Rev. Grant LeMarquand, Trinity School for Ministry
* Eugene Rogers, University of North Carolina, Greensboro
* The Rev. George Sumner, Wycliffe College, Toronto
* The Rev. Daniel A. Westberg of Nashotah House

The Chicago Consultation has issued this press release:

CHICAGO, July 1, 2009—Ruth Meyers, Hodges Haynes Professor of Liturgics at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, General Convention deputy from the Diocese of Chicago, and co-convener of the Chicago Consultation, responded to the news that the names of most members of the House of Bishops Theology Committee panel on same-sex blessings have been made public:

“Continued scholarly work, done with particular attention to the work of the Holy Spirit in committed, life-long, monogamous unions of faithful gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Episcopalians, can liberate the church to discern more fully the work of the Spirit in all life-long unions of fidelity and mutual love. We wish this panel well, and we call upon General Convention to enrich its theological work by establishing a common rite for the blessing of unions across the Episcopal Church.”

“We commit to praying for each of these theologians and their co-chairs by name, and we hope that the remaining two members of the panel will choose to come forward publicly so that we may begin General Convention next week with the spirit of openness and transparency that characterizes our polity and our common life…”

Posted by Simon Sarmiento on Wednesday, 1 July 2009