I haven't written for a week. I think the pressure of writing from General Convention was a bit too much and getting back to the 'right coast' threw me off a bit in terms of what time it was.
I think I need to reiterate what the name of this blog is about since I've had a few people ask me. Jonah, who traveled to Nineveh in the belly of a fish and was vomited up on that shore, proclaimed God's message to the vile folks and Nineveh and then, when they repented, was, in a word 'pissed off' at God (two words actually....) He sat up on a hill, Jonah did, in the horrible and unrelenting sun, to complain to God about God's sparing the folks of Nineveh. God caused a plant to grow up to shade him and just as soon caused a worm to kill the plant. That plant, many Biblical scholars agree, was a Castor Oil Tree. Jonah is left to ponder under that dead tree and that is where I find myself, more often than not, not a little perturbed with God and trying to ponder out God's ways....
I was just out in the Close of St. John's, watching the sparrows bathe and feed. They bathe in the little spots of dust they can find in such a rainy Summer and feed on the crumbs they find from the Soup Kitchen which serves lunch outside in good weather. There is a stick hierarchy in the Close. If the pair of hawks who live downtown are in the ancient elms, the close is free of any other creatures--all of them knowing 'what's good for them' in some instinctive way. Crows also tend to empty the Close for awhile, but squirrels and pigeons are glad to share the space with those feathered rats after a time. Mid-afternoon is the time for the sparrows and a few starlings, who have seemingly met some kind of avian understanding.
Watching a sparrow bathe in the dust is about as wonderful as anything other than watching some creature give birth. They lay down and roll in a way you wouldn't imagine birds could do, flutter and flap and cover themselves with dirt only to shake most of it off and fly away refreshed. Some are impatient and try to drive away another sparrow from the dust only to result in a wing-flapping, chirping confrontation until one backs off to wait.
One of the great gospel tunes is "His Eye is on the Sparrow" and it brings home to me the reality that if God is concerned with these tiny, fussy, fluttering birds that weigh, I would guess, 3 or 4 ounces, then it isn't inconceivable that God loves a short, pudgy white man as well.
"I know he's watching me...."
A bit terrifying to know God has me always in his/her eye, but also, a great relief. I'm not alone, no, never alone. Me and the sparrow, just like that, the apple of God's eye....
Monday, July 27, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
home again, home again, jiggidy jig
I arrived at John Wayne Airport at 4:45. It is a small airport and doesn't open until 5 a.m.! But I was in line with Bp. Wilfredo Ramos Orench, formerly a suffragan in CT and recently the provisional bishop of Ecuador Centrale. Here's my first question--how can their be a diocese of Central Ecuador when the only other diocese there is the Diocese of Ecuador? To be 'central' shouldn't there be dioceses called East Ecuador and West Ecuador? He tried to explain it to me but it was too early in the morning to understand. Little things like that cause me to ponder.
Bp. Ramos is one of my favorite people. He is so kind and good and engaging. I miss him. The GC approved the consecration of his successor so in two weeks he'll be retiring and moving home to Porto Rica. He brought some bishop vestments to the convention and gave them away! He's serious about retiring....
So I flew from John Wayne (which is a small airport with long runways because huge jets land and take off there) to George H. W. Bush airport in Houston. I've flown through Houston before and, just like always, the connecting flight in invariably in another terminal. I think they do that so you have to walk by this larger than life statue of the first Bush president and a big display. Actually the statue is Kennedyesque--George the first's hair and tie are blowing in the wind. I actually liked him a lot better than his son. Then from there to Cleveland where, once more, the connecting flight to Hartford was a terminal and a half--about a mile--from where we deplaned.
I slept in my bed last night for the first time since July 4. I am so glad to be home and did some initial talking about convention in my sermon today. I want to do more with what happened when I get the stuff I shipped FedEX from the west coast. My internal clock isn't functioning well and I'm not very creative right now. More later....
Bp. Ramos is one of my favorite people. He is so kind and good and engaging. I miss him. The GC approved the consecration of his successor so in two weeks he'll be retiring and moving home to Porto Rica. He brought some bishop vestments to the convention and gave them away! He's serious about retiring....
So I flew from John Wayne (which is a small airport with long runways because huge jets land and take off there) to George H. W. Bush airport in Houston. I've flown through Houston before and, just like always, the connecting flight in invariably in another terminal. I think they do that so you have to walk by this larger than life statue of the first Bush president and a big display. Actually the statue is Kennedyesque--George the first's hair and tie are blowing in the wind. I actually liked him a lot better than his son. Then from there to Cleveland where, once more, the connecting flight to Hartford was a terminal and a half--about a mile--from where we deplaned.
I slept in my bed last night for the first time since July 4. I am so glad to be home and did some initial talking about convention in my sermon today. I want to do more with what happened when I get the stuff I shipped FedEX from the west coast. My internal clock isn't functioning well and I'm not very creative right now. More later....
Thursday, July 16, 2009
The day after tomorrow...
That's when I'll come home. We've been here so long that when people part for the night--like after dinner--we say to each other, "are you going home?"--meaning the hotel!
Day after tomorrow I can answer that--YES!!
I'll check my email tomorrow at the Con Center but won't blog since I have to have a 4 am wakeup call tomorrow night to catch a cab to the airport. I've been packing a bit so it won't all be left to do tomorrow.
Today the HofD got really moving. We covered three days of legislation in two sessions and didn't have to meet tonight. But I did go out to dinner with 4 others from CT and it was a 2 hour dinner....
Well, we got moving to a greater extent than we have been but there were times of absolute madness. Here's the best example: We elected members of the committee for the nomination of the Presiding Bishop. It is a committee no one wants to ever meet. Katherine j-s was elected in 2006 to a nine year term. So the real nomination committee will be elected in 2012 to report to the GC of 2015. But just in case she should die, be incapacitated or decide to join the circus (though what 'circus' could be more circus-like than the Episcopal Church?) the mechanism to replace her would be in place. That's hints of something that it is hard to imagine unless you've been a part of it: the Episcopal GC is so weighed down by inertia that it must be tightly administered or it would spin out into space by it's own centrifugal force. It is one of the reasons that the HofD is so hard to keep moving AND so hard to control. 800+ deputies (about a third of which are new every three years--three of CT's 8 deputies and 2 alternates had never been in that role before and a 4th was an alternate who was a 1st time deputy...and that's CT, the land of consistency...) left to their own devices would either bog down completely or run away to chaos. So the level of control and parliamentary strictness has to be intense. But even with that, things fly apart. Today for instance, we had a vote on a paper ballot (most voting has been electronic and just as we got it right, it's time to go! But a paper ballot to elect the hopefully never meeting committee for the nomination of a Presiding Bishop became a comedy not too far removed from the Keystone Kops (sorry for the ancient allusion for those who are under 50!). Vote for one lay person and one clergy from each of the 9 provinces of the EC and since it makes counting the votes easier, put all the page 1's of the ballot in one pile and all the page 2's in another for them to be collected from each deputation. Sounds like something a group of 800 people whose average IQ is probably well above the national average, right? But there was no picture or biography for Province 9, which is the
Spanish speaking Province of Central America. Lost in translation is not an idle phrase. Bear in mind that the Provincial Caucuses met last night but due to the magic of email and digital photos that can be sent by email, the pictures and biographies were ready for us this morning. (The print shop must work through the night on this stuff to produce 800 copies of that only a few hours after it was emailed!) Province 9 thought they were to elect their representatives rather than have the whole house vote on them so they did and didn't send in their information, so it wasn't printed, just the four names.
Someone rose to say they could not possibly vote for people they knew nothing about and had no picture of and who had Latino names. Another rose to ask if they failed to vote for candidates for Province 9. That was asked three times by three different folks before the Voting Secretary, a wondrous young priest names Winny (who, for those who were part of our adult forum using the LIVING THE QUESTIONS videos, was the Hispanic woman who was always sitting in a room with a fireplace and various Hindu gods/goddesses on the mantle) told them 'yes' their ballots would be invalidated if they didn't cast votes for each province. (A rule of the HofD is 'you have to vote!', there are no abstentions--which the HofB's can do). Then there were several deputies who rose to point out that if page one and page two (where province 9 was) were handed in separately, how would the elections committee know which page ones to invalidate. (Now, imagine, we are supposedly marking out simple paper ballots during all this conversation!) Finally a deputy moved that if people did not vote for Province 9 that only page two should be invalidated. There was some debate and then a vote. the motion carried. Winny said, "I cannot imagine a reason someone would not simply mark two names from Province 9." Vote for somebody, for God's sake, just because you should and the House's rules demand it. Vote for someone because you like their name. or vote 1-2 or 2-1 or 1-1 or 2-2, just mark the ballot and turn it in. This is, after all, a committee that we pray will 'never' meet!!!
Perhaps the average IQ of the HofD is a detriment. People are constantly overthinking things. It took over half-an-hour to have everyone finally mark and hand in their ballots that took 18 pen strokes....
On the same level of insanity--the Hof B DID DEFEAT the constitutional change which took the vote from retired bishops--the change the bishops have wanted for decades!!! Apparently, since the origins of this movement came when the Hof B was what someone called "the most exclusive men's club in America", to remove the retired bishops' vote would disenfranchise a disproportionate # of women and minorities. 30 years ago there were no women and only a scattering of minorities in the HofB. What did Bonhoeffer say about how the church 'moves'? We move so slowly the entire context changes....
The budget passed without amendment (not for lack of trying! there were at least a dozen proposals for changes, all of which failed). The budget was a $23million decrease from the last 3 year budget--about 13% (nearly the figure St. John's cut its budget for 2009 from 2008.) Much drama since everything cut meant a lot to some. The bishops approved it without change as well. I don't know, but $141 million seems enough to run the EC for three years....But pain is real and folks from St. John's Waterbury reading this need to know we will have to cut more from the 2010 budget unless we all suddenly decide to tithe (a minimum expectation for giving approved by several of the last GCs).
Two of the cuts that were not restored were for the Anti-Racism work of the church and the Mission Development Fund, which was poised to raise $250million. Those two I have great sympathy for. Since racism isn't eradicated from the church or our society (though we passed resolutions recommending it should be!) not funding that work seems odd. And, if we want to raise money--the EC is the only mainline church without a development office, per se--then why wouldn't we spend money to do so? You might notice that the $ the Development Fund was set to try to raise was nearly twice the 3 year budget for the whole church, it seems short sighted to cut the budget to eliminate the entire staff. I suspect it was a turf war of sorts, who would control all that money and decide where to spend it? So, rather than just raise it and figure that out later, we decided to NOT raise it! I am prejudiced since two of the staff of that project are dear friends of mine. But my prejudice not withstanding it seems a bit daft to not spend some money to make a lot of money. Call me crazy if you wish. I suspect the executive council--the EC's equivalent of the Vestry--could restore some money to that project. I hope they do.
The HofD also voted to discharge--that means simply, to remove from the agenda--a resolution approved by the Bishops and recommended by the Committee giving 'vote' to some of the Youth Presence at GC. CT has a young person, Rachels Downs 21/2 or something, in our deputation, who, by the way was the top vote getter among the lay deputies at Diocesan Convention. But there are only 20+ deputies under 25 out of 800+. The resolution would have provided vote as well as seat and voice to members of the official youth presence who sit on the floor, not far behind CT, and can speak but have no vote. By discharging the resolution we set the whole process back 3 years. It was a constitutional change which requires 2
GC's passing it in the same form. So, had we approved it, it would not have been constitutional until 2012 and no in force until 2015. Now 2018 is the earliest we can give voice to more young people. It was a sticky constitutional and parliamentary issue but by discharging it I will be 71 before it could possibly be true and all the young people in the Youth Presence will be in their mid-20s and we will have missed a whole generation of youth by not allowing them access to the decision making power of the church. God help us....
So today we pissed off the people of color and the young people. Tomorrow we'll royally piss off the Conservatives with a resolution passed overwhelmingly by the bishops that will start the process toward liturgies for same-sex unions and give wide interpretive laditude to bishops in states where same-sex marriage is legal to exert extraordinary pastoral concern. Some bishops will interpret that as letting priests officiate at same sex marriages rather than merely blessing those civil marriages and some will see as less than that. Vote by orders is certain, but I predict, feeling optimistic that the votes will be there. I predict 69-50 in the lay order and 66-54 in the clerical order. We shall see.
\
I read an interview on line tonight with Gene Robinson, who is the center of this firestorm over sexuality. When he was asked if he recognized the pain of the folks who are on the losing side of these issues he reflected that he had been on the losing side for decades and never left the church. Now it is the other side on the so called losing side. Gene thought it would be instructive to them.
I've been a priest since 1975. I began, in a remarkable but actually small way, with Gene Robinson's consent by the GC to be on the winning side in 2003. I was a priest for 28 years on the 'losing' side (though I never saw it that way--I saw it as being called to wait on the spirit to move. So I've been on the so called 'losing side' for 28 years vs. being on the so called 'winning side" for 6 years. And I never, in almost 3 decades considered for a moment 'leaving the EC". It is ironic for me that the 'other side' (a distinction I reject since the church moves with the Spirit and the Spirit claims all) is so quick to consider leaving. I actually feel, for the first time, that we as the EC are 'telling the truth' about 'what is'. I like that, feeling like a truth-teller and letting that stance be real and letting others react to it as they may.
The Church of England today said awful things about us. So be it. I'd rather have awful things said about me when I'm telling the truth than when I'm not. We haven't told the truth about the reality of the EC's struggle with human sexuality until now. Let the rest of the AC judge us as they may. God bless them. At least, in my mind, criticism of Who we really are is preferred to criticism of who we pretended to be.
I'll write to you from home. I am so glad to be leaving this place of eternal sunshine and endless blue skys. Bp. curry told me today that his daughter called from CT to say there was an astonishing thunder storm last night. I long for cloudy skies and thunder storms and weather that changes if you simply 'wait a while'. I will not regret flying away from southern cal. back to the unpredictable north east. I hope it rains on sunday--which, by the way for St. John's folks, I'll be preaching and celebrating at 8 a.m. For me it will be--in my body clock--5 a.m.! Does the request, 'don't expect too much" make sense???
See some of you Sunday....I'll see Bern and our creatures Saturday night. Alleluia and Amen!
Day after tomorrow I can answer that--YES!!
I'll check my email tomorrow at the Con Center but won't blog since I have to have a 4 am wakeup call tomorrow night to catch a cab to the airport. I've been packing a bit so it won't all be left to do tomorrow.
Today the HofD got really moving. We covered three days of legislation in two sessions and didn't have to meet tonight. But I did go out to dinner with 4 others from CT and it was a 2 hour dinner....
Well, we got moving to a greater extent than we have been but there were times of absolute madness. Here's the best example: We elected members of the committee for the nomination of the Presiding Bishop. It is a committee no one wants to ever meet. Katherine j-s was elected in 2006 to a nine year term. So the real nomination committee will be elected in 2012 to report to the GC of 2015. But just in case she should die, be incapacitated or decide to join the circus (though what 'circus' could be more circus-like than the Episcopal Church?) the mechanism to replace her would be in place. That's hints of something that it is hard to imagine unless you've been a part of it: the Episcopal GC is so weighed down by inertia that it must be tightly administered or it would spin out into space by it's own centrifugal force. It is one of the reasons that the HofD is so hard to keep moving AND so hard to control. 800+ deputies (about a third of which are new every three years--three of CT's 8 deputies and 2 alternates had never been in that role before and a 4th was an alternate who was a 1st time deputy...and that's CT, the land of consistency...) left to their own devices would either bog down completely or run away to chaos. So the level of control and parliamentary strictness has to be intense. But even with that, things fly apart. Today for instance, we had a vote on a paper ballot (most voting has been electronic and just as we got it right, it's time to go! But a paper ballot to elect the hopefully never meeting committee for the nomination of a Presiding Bishop became a comedy not too far removed from the Keystone Kops (sorry for the ancient allusion for those who are under 50!). Vote for one lay person and one clergy from each of the 9 provinces of the EC and since it makes counting the votes easier, put all the page 1's of the ballot in one pile and all the page 2's in another for them to be collected from each deputation. Sounds like something a group of 800 people whose average IQ is probably well above the national average, right? But there was no picture or biography for Province 9, which is the
Spanish speaking Province of Central America. Lost in translation is not an idle phrase. Bear in mind that the Provincial Caucuses met last night but due to the magic of email and digital photos that can be sent by email, the pictures and biographies were ready for us this morning. (The print shop must work through the night on this stuff to produce 800 copies of that only a few hours after it was emailed!) Province 9 thought they were to elect their representatives rather than have the whole house vote on them so they did and didn't send in their information, so it wasn't printed, just the four names.
Someone rose to say they could not possibly vote for people they knew nothing about and had no picture of and who had Latino names. Another rose to ask if they failed to vote for candidates for Province 9. That was asked three times by three different folks before the Voting Secretary, a wondrous young priest names Winny (who, for those who were part of our adult forum using the LIVING THE QUESTIONS videos, was the Hispanic woman who was always sitting in a room with a fireplace and various Hindu gods/goddesses on the mantle) told them 'yes' their ballots would be invalidated if they didn't cast votes for each province. (A rule of the HofD is 'you have to vote!', there are no abstentions--which the HofB's can do). Then there were several deputies who rose to point out that if page one and page two (where province 9 was) were handed in separately, how would the elections committee know which page ones to invalidate. (Now, imagine, we are supposedly marking out simple paper ballots during all this conversation!) Finally a deputy moved that if people did not vote for Province 9 that only page two should be invalidated. There was some debate and then a vote. the motion carried. Winny said, "I cannot imagine a reason someone would not simply mark two names from Province 9." Vote for somebody, for God's sake, just because you should and the House's rules demand it. Vote for someone because you like their name. or vote 1-2 or 2-1 or 1-1 or 2-2, just mark the ballot and turn it in. This is, after all, a committee that we pray will 'never' meet!!!
Perhaps the average IQ of the HofD is a detriment. People are constantly overthinking things. It took over half-an-hour to have everyone finally mark and hand in their ballots that took 18 pen strokes....
On the same level of insanity--the Hof B DID DEFEAT the constitutional change which took the vote from retired bishops--the change the bishops have wanted for decades!!! Apparently, since the origins of this movement came when the Hof B was what someone called "the most exclusive men's club in America", to remove the retired bishops' vote would disenfranchise a disproportionate # of women and minorities. 30 years ago there were no women and only a scattering of minorities in the HofB. What did Bonhoeffer say about how the church 'moves'? We move so slowly the entire context changes....
The budget passed without amendment (not for lack of trying! there were at least a dozen proposals for changes, all of which failed). The budget was a $23million decrease from the last 3 year budget--about 13% (nearly the figure St. John's cut its budget for 2009 from 2008.) Much drama since everything cut meant a lot to some. The bishops approved it without change as well. I don't know, but $141 million seems enough to run the EC for three years....But pain is real and folks from St. John's Waterbury reading this need to know we will have to cut more from the 2010 budget unless we all suddenly decide to tithe (a minimum expectation for giving approved by several of the last GCs).
Two of the cuts that were not restored were for the Anti-Racism work of the church and the Mission Development Fund, which was poised to raise $250million. Those two I have great sympathy for. Since racism isn't eradicated from the church or our society (though we passed resolutions recommending it should be!) not funding that work seems odd. And, if we want to raise money--the EC is the only mainline church without a development office, per se--then why wouldn't we spend money to do so? You might notice that the $ the Development Fund was set to try to raise was nearly twice the 3 year budget for the whole church, it seems short sighted to cut the budget to eliminate the entire staff. I suspect it was a turf war of sorts, who would control all that money and decide where to spend it? So, rather than just raise it and figure that out later, we decided to NOT raise it! I am prejudiced since two of the staff of that project are dear friends of mine. But my prejudice not withstanding it seems a bit daft to not spend some money to make a lot of money. Call me crazy if you wish. I suspect the executive council--the EC's equivalent of the Vestry--could restore some money to that project. I hope they do.
The HofD also voted to discharge--that means simply, to remove from the agenda--a resolution approved by the Bishops and recommended by the Committee giving 'vote' to some of the Youth Presence at GC. CT has a young person, Rachels Downs 21/2 or something, in our deputation, who, by the way was the top vote getter among the lay deputies at Diocesan Convention. But there are only 20+ deputies under 25 out of 800+. The resolution would have provided vote as well as seat and voice to members of the official youth presence who sit on the floor, not far behind CT, and can speak but have no vote. By discharging the resolution we set the whole process back 3 years. It was a constitutional change which requires 2
GC's passing it in the same form. So, had we approved it, it would not have been constitutional until 2012 and no in force until 2015. Now 2018 is the earliest we can give voice to more young people. It was a sticky constitutional and parliamentary issue but by discharging it I will be 71 before it could possibly be true and all the young people in the Youth Presence will be in their mid-20s and we will have missed a whole generation of youth by not allowing them access to the decision making power of the church. God help us....
So today we pissed off the people of color and the young people. Tomorrow we'll royally piss off the Conservatives with a resolution passed overwhelmingly by the bishops that will start the process toward liturgies for same-sex unions and give wide interpretive laditude to bishops in states where same-sex marriage is legal to exert extraordinary pastoral concern. Some bishops will interpret that as letting priests officiate at same sex marriages rather than merely blessing those civil marriages and some will see as less than that. Vote by orders is certain, but I predict, feeling optimistic that the votes will be there. I predict 69-50 in the lay order and 66-54 in the clerical order. We shall see.
\
I read an interview on line tonight with Gene Robinson, who is the center of this firestorm over sexuality. When he was asked if he recognized the pain of the folks who are on the losing side of these issues he reflected that he had been on the losing side for decades and never left the church. Now it is the other side on the so called losing side. Gene thought it would be instructive to them.
I've been a priest since 1975. I began, in a remarkable but actually small way, with Gene Robinson's consent by the GC to be on the winning side in 2003. I was a priest for 28 years on the 'losing' side (though I never saw it that way--I saw it as being called to wait on the spirit to move. So I've been on the so called 'losing side' for 28 years vs. being on the so called 'winning side" for 6 years. And I never, in almost 3 decades considered for a moment 'leaving the EC". It is ironic for me that the 'other side' (a distinction I reject since the church moves with the Spirit and the Spirit claims all) is so quick to consider leaving. I actually feel, for the first time, that we as the EC are 'telling the truth' about 'what is'. I like that, feeling like a truth-teller and letting that stance be real and letting others react to it as they may.
The Church of England today said awful things about us. So be it. I'd rather have awful things said about me when I'm telling the truth than when I'm not. We haven't told the truth about the reality of the EC's struggle with human sexuality until now. Let the rest of the AC judge us as they may. God bless them. At least, in my mind, criticism of Who we really are is preferred to criticism of who we pretended to be.
I'll write to you from home. I am so glad to be leaving this place of eternal sunshine and endless blue skys. Bp. curry told me today that his daughter called from CT to say there was an astonishing thunder storm last night. I long for cloudy skies and thunder storms and weather that changes if you simply 'wait a while'. I will not regret flying away from southern cal. back to the unpredictable north east. I hope it rains on sunday--which, by the way for St. John's folks, I'll be preaching and celebrating at 8 a.m. For me it will be--in my body clock--5 a.m.! Does the request, 'don't expect too much" make sense???
See some of you Sunday....I'll see Bern and our creatures Saturday night. Alleluia and Amen!
The 9th day
This morning is the next to last legislative day. (Only two more sleeps until I can start home!) We will probably have a session after dinner tonight so I expect to be in the house from 9:30-11:15, go to Eucharist (Wilfredo Ramos it the celebrant today) grab lunch, be in session from 2-6, grab dinner and be in session from 7:30-10.
It's little wonder that I feel about the other deputies the way you felt about your friends from summer camp. We've been isolated in the midst of a multitude for almost two weeks. We've spent more time together than we ever spend with our families in two weeks! I really like them all a great deal. But I probably won't be too melancholy about leaving them behind!
Time is a remarkable concept. It's been around since human beings could make a mark on a cave wall to record the rhythm of dawn and darkness and since they noticed the shadow of a rock moved from one side to the other during the day. But as helpful a concept as time is, it is an elusive experience. When I arrived here, it seemed like I would be in Anaheim practically indefinitely. Yet now, with only two days to stay, those few hours seem to stretch out indefinitely still...though the days and hours have seemingly sped by.
(the weather forcast was for 'partly cloudy'. It seems that means that the morning haze hangs on a bit longer on the horizon and the blue is perhaps half a shade less blue....Lord, I miss a cloudy day...)
I'm not sure when I'll be able to write here again. But I want you to know I've enjoyed it and even if it's not until I get home, I will try to wrap it up a bit before moving on to other things to ponder under my withered castor oil tree....Be well....
It's little wonder that I feel about the other deputies the way you felt about your friends from summer camp. We've been isolated in the midst of a multitude for almost two weeks. We've spent more time together than we ever spend with our families in two weeks! I really like them all a great deal. But I probably won't be too melancholy about leaving them behind!
Time is a remarkable concept. It's been around since human beings could make a mark on a cave wall to record the rhythm of dawn and darkness and since they noticed the shadow of a rock moved from one side to the other during the day. But as helpful a concept as time is, it is an elusive experience. When I arrived here, it seemed like I would be in Anaheim practically indefinitely. Yet now, with only two days to stay, those few hours seem to stretch out indefinitely still...though the days and hours have seemingly sped by.
(the weather forcast was for 'partly cloudy'. It seems that means that the morning haze hangs on a bit longer on the horizon and the blue is perhaps half a shade less blue....Lord, I miss a cloudy day...)
I'm not sure when I'll be able to write here again. But I want you to know I've enjoyed it and even if it's not until I get home, I will try to wrap it up a bit before moving on to other things to ponder under my withered castor oil tree....Be well....
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
The rocket's red glare...
It must be 9:30 because it sounds like a war zone outside. All the pyro-technicians must get their training as Disneyland.
About Disneyland, by the way, there have been workers from the Magic Kingdom outside the Conv. Center every day, handing out postcards and information about the labor practices of Disney. The workers--most of whom are paid just above minimum wage--are having their health care reduced if they don't take over the entire payment. Taking health care away at this time in history seems draconian to me. There was even a prayer vigil for the workers after the afternoon session yesterday. It was held among the pristine and beautiful grounds of the Hilton Hotel--a bit ironic that.
Today the budget was presented. Bishop Smith is vice-chair of the PB&F committee (Program, Budget and Funding) and helped present the budget. It is one of the very few times we hold a joint session of both houses and the bishops joined their deputations for the presentation. Not surprizingly, there is a great short fall and programs that mean a lot to some were either slashed or eliminated. Plus there will be layoffs at the Church Center in NYC. It is a painful process and PB&F is the hardest working committee in the GC. They have to deal with resolutions that ask for funding even as they are trying to finalize the budget. Both houses will debate and seek to pass the budget tomorrow and time is running low. Two more sleeps before the convention ends on Friday afternoon.
We also passed a historic resolution creating a church wide health plan. I've always wondered why we didn't have a plan for the whole church and now we do. Insurance issues though, are quite tangled and complicated. Quite a few spoke against it and against a required pension plan for lay employees. Harriet is the only lay employee we have who works enough hours and we, at St. John's, already contribute to her pension. However, there are apparently those around the church that do not. These two issues brought up a divide in the EC that is as significant, if not more so, than the progressive/orthodox divide--small churches vs. larger churches.
A recent report out of 815 that I gave to the vestry reveals some startling facts. Did you know only 10% of Episcopal Churches are in urban areas? When you think of the large number of urban areas in the country, that is a bit surprising to me. But here's what blew me away, nearly 80% of Episcopal Churches have a sunday attendance of less than 150. Just over half of them have a Sunday attendance of 70 or less. St. John's, which I don't think of as a 'large' congregation, is in the top 10% of ECs in total Sunday attendance and we are about 35 people per Sunday from being in the top 3.5% of Episcopal Churches. Those figures are stunning to me and give me much more pause about the health, indeed the existence of the EC through the next 100 years. The median Sunday attendance at an EC (line them all up and find the one dead in the middle with equal # of churches with lower attendance and higher attendance, is 69!!! Because it is an 'average', St. John's is over 300 in the three Sunday services. (We don't get that in August, obviously!) How can a church with such statistics long survive? So deputies from small churches are afraid the new required church-wide health insurance and the mandated pension payments for lay employees over 2000 hours a year (1500 hours from what was passed today!) will tip them over the edge.
Since I'm big on irony, it is ironic that this denomination of small churches holds a 10 day convention in expensiver places and spends millions of $ for it. They negotiate a real deal for housing (the room I'm in is $120 or so a night though it says on the door of my room it is $600 a night for one person. Each deputy from CT--10 of us with the first alternates--was given about $3500 for travel and expenses. $35,000 seems a lot more for small dioceses made up of small churches than it does for CT or LA or Chicago or DC or Mass and other dioceses like that. The greater Irony is that even though nearly 80% of EC have 150 or less on Sunday, more Episcopalians go to church in the other 20% than in the 80%! Even in CT with 180 parishes, there are probably at least as many people in church on Sunday in the churches of Fairfield County and New Haven as there are in the rest of the parishes combined. We are a denomination of 'small churches' that acts like a denomination of 'large churches'. The budget does cut the length of convention by 2 days in 2112, but that seems like pocket change savings to the dioceses. When I come to retire, I'd like to work part time in one of those small, family sized churches and figure out what that's about. The first church I served had about 75 on a Sunday, but at that time they could afford both a priest and a building. St. James, Charleston was over 90 years old and when I stayed 5 years I had the longest tenure of any vicar they ever had. St. John's is 276 years old and I've been there 20 years and, I think I'm still 4th or 5th in terms of longevity. I'm only the 18th Rector. St. James had had more vicars than that in less than 100 years.
Another Irony of the astonishing kind: since 1979 there have been resolutions to have only active bishops be able to vote at GC. In 2006 we passed a constitutional change (which must be passed by two consecutive conventions in the same language to take effect) which accomplished that. The move was instigated and supported by retired bishops who felt they should have seat and voice but no vote since they did not represent a constituency--they were accountable to no one. So, 30 years later, we are poised on the edge of passing what retired bishops requested. (Arthur Walmsley, one of our former bishops, was pit bull about this.) The bishops would approve and the deputies would give back the vote over and again. But last night I was talking to Jeffery Rowthorn, one of CT's retired bishops and discovered he DIDN'T favor it. And Bp Smith said most of the retired bishops were against it. It occurs to me that most of the retired bishops who have supported this over three decades are either dead or not here. So, it may be the hofb that defeats it this time! How wierd is that. 30 years to give the bishops what they wanted was time enough for them to probably not want it anymore....
I talked to a man from Ireland, a former RC priest, who is one of the people with a booth in the Exhibition hall. We were both outside having a cigarette. The conversation started when I asked him, "do you remember when we ruled the earth, when our tribe was much larger?" He laughed and introduced himself. He told me 'Bradley' is a common name in the county of Ireland where he comes from. I found out he lives in southern Cal and I asked him how he could stand the endlessness of the blue sky and the unending sunshine. He told me he played golf--'nuf said. I told him Ireland is the only place outside the US I think I could live--mostly for the fog and clouds and ubiquitous rain. People I talk to who start going on and on about the climate here are shaken and confused when I tell them I can't leave 'paradise' soon enough. I really think being in Anaheim much longer would make me long for snow and ice and the 15 hours of darkness in winter in CT. What my new Irish friend told me resonates with my psyche. I always thought Bradley was a British name, but since noone in my family has ever been able to trace us back across the Atlantic, maybe I'm a lot more Irish than I thought. I know Celtic music is my 'soul music' though
Bern--Italian and Hungarian to the core runs out of the room when I'm watching it on PBS! I kinda like thinking my half-Irish blood on my mother's side may be equaled by half-Irish DNA on my father's side. And I could live in Ireland.....
The hofd is like driving a Packard on the I-5 in Southern California. We are two days behind in our work with 2 days to go! We keep shortening debate and putting more things on the consent calendar that can be voted all at once. Everyone is a little tired and a lot crabby. And there is much more to do.
last thing: today we approved continuing in the Anglican Communion's conversation about a Covenant for the AC. I'm dead against it. The Covenant is being designed to make us a much more hierarchical church and taking privilege from the 39 churches to consentrate it in a communion wide rule of bishops and archbishops. That is antithetical to our polity and, I would suggest, totally un-Anglican. The 'four instruments of unity' under the covenant in its present form are: the Archbishop of Canterbury, the gathering of the Primates of the 39 churches, the Lambeth Conference (all bishops) and the Anglican Consultative Council made up of a bishop a priest and a lay person from each of the 39 churches. We would begin to look like the RC church with the ABC as Pope and the Primates as the College of Cardinals and the Lambeth Conference as the College of Bishops. As bad an idea as I can imagine or conceive of in my mind. I was one of a dozen or so of 814 who voted 'no', but I was proud of my vote. The key thing is this--any 'covenant' of any form must be approved by a GC and I have come to trust the GC this year. Almost all the other 38 churches could agree to it if their archbishop agreed with it. We are one of the few Anglican churches who doesn't have an Archbishop. We have a 'Presiding
Bishop" and she 'presides' rather than 'rules'.
I miss all of you back in CT. I miss Bern and Bela (our dog) and Luke (the only one of our two still living cats I like) and the staff I love at St. John's and the people there and clouds and thunderstorms and crabby people of the East Coast. I miss a familiar ocean and the cultural agreement we have back east to maintain that what you see is what you get. Lots of people at GC have told me how impressed they are with how polite and friendly all the workers in the hotels and resturants are. I could stand a little rudeness right now. Three sleeps and I'll be in Houston and Cleveland and Hartford and then home...home sweet home....
About Disneyland, by the way, there have been workers from the Magic Kingdom outside the Conv. Center every day, handing out postcards and information about the labor practices of Disney. The workers--most of whom are paid just above minimum wage--are having their health care reduced if they don't take over the entire payment. Taking health care away at this time in history seems draconian to me. There was even a prayer vigil for the workers after the afternoon session yesterday. It was held among the pristine and beautiful grounds of the Hilton Hotel--a bit ironic that.
Today the budget was presented. Bishop Smith is vice-chair of the PB&F committee (Program, Budget and Funding) and helped present the budget. It is one of the very few times we hold a joint session of both houses and the bishops joined their deputations for the presentation. Not surprizingly, there is a great short fall and programs that mean a lot to some were either slashed or eliminated. Plus there will be layoffs at the Church Center in NYC. It is a painful process and PB&F is the hardest working committee in the GC. They have to deal with resolutions that ask for funding even as they are trying to finalize the budget. Both houses will debate and seek to pass the budget tomorrow and time is running low. Two more sleeps before the convention ends on Friday afternoon.
We also passed a historic resolution creating a church wide health plan. I've always wondered why we didn't have a plan for the whole church and now we do. Insurance issues though, are quite tangled and complicated. Quite a few spoke against it and against a required pension plan for lay employees. Harriet is the only lay employee we have who works enough hours and we, at St. John's, already contribute to her pension. However, there are apparently those around the church that do not. These two issues brought up a divide in the EC that is as significant, if not more so, than the progressive/orthodox divide--small churches vs. larger churches.
A recent report out of 815 that I gave to the vestry reveals some startling facts. Did you know only 10% of Episcopal Churches are in urban areas? When you think of the large number of urban areas in the country, that is a bit surprising to me. But here's what blew me away, nearly 80% of Episcopal Churches have a sunday attendance of less than 150. Just over half of them have a Sunday attendance of 70 or less. St. John's, which I don't think of as a 'large' congregation, is in the top 10% of ECs in total Sunday attendance and we are about 35 people per Sunday from being in the top 3.5% of Episcopal Churches. Those figures are stunning to me and give me much more pause about the health, indeed the existence of the EC through the next 100 years. The median Sunday attendance at an EC (line them all up and find the one dead in the middle with equal # of churches with lower attendance and higher attendance, is 69!!! Because it is an 'average', St. John's is over 300 in the three Sunday services. (We don't get that in August, obviously!) How can a church with such statistics long survive? So deputies from small churches are afraid the new required church-wide health insurance and the mandated pension payments for lay employees over 2000 hours a year (1500 hours from what was passed today!) will tip them over the edge.
Since I'm big on irony, it is ironic that this denomination of small churches holds a 10 day convention in expensiver places and spends millions of $ for it. They negotiate a real deal for housing (the room I'm in is $120 or so a night though it says on the door of my room it is $600 a night for one person. Each deputy from CT--10 of us with the first alternates--was given about $3500 for travel and expenses. $35,000 seems a lot more for small dioceses made up of small churches than it does for CT or LA or Chicago or DC or Mass and other dioceses like that. The greater Irony is that even though nearly 80% of EC have 150 or less on Sunday, more Episcopalians go to church in the other 20% than in the 80%! Even in CT with 180 parishes, there are probably at least as many people in church on Sunday in the churches of Fairfield County and New Haven as there are in the rest of the parishes combined. We are a denomination of 'small churches' that acts like a denomination of 'large churches'. The budget does cut the length of convention by 2 days in 2112, but that seems like pocket change savings to the dioceses. When I come to retire, I'd like to work part time in one of those small, family sized churches and figure out what that's about. The first church I served had about 75 on a Sunday, but at that time they could afford both a priest and a building. St. James, Charleston was over 90 years old and when I stayed 5 years I had the longest tenure of any vicar they ever had. St. John's is 276 years old and I've been there 20 years and, I think I'm still 4th or 5th in terms of longevity. I'm only the 18th Rector. St. James had had more vicars than that in less than 100 years.
Another Irony of the astonishing kind: since 1979 there have been resolutions to have only active bishops be able to vote at GC. In 2006 we passed a constitutional change (which must be passed by two consecutive conventions in the same language to take effect) which accomplished that. The move was instigated and supported by retired bishops who felt they should have seat and voice but no vote since they did not represent a constituency--they were accountable to no one. So, 30 years later, we are poised on the edge of passing what retired bishops requested. (Arthur Walmsley, one of our former bishops, was pit bull about this.) The bishops would approve and the deputies would give back the vote over and again. But last night I was talking to Jeffery Rowthorn, one of CT's retired bishops and discovered he DIDN'T favor it. And Bp Smith said most of the retired bishops were against it. It occurs to me that most of the retired bishops who have supported this over three decades are either dead or not here. So, it may be the hofb that defeats it this time! How wierd is that. 30 years to give the bishops what they wanted was time enough for them to probably not want it anymore....
I talked to a man from Ireland, a former RC priest, who is one of the people with a booth in the Exhibition hall. We were both outside having a cigarette. The conversation started when I asked him, "do you remember when we ruled the earth, when our tribe was much larger?" He laughed and introduced himself. He told me 'Bradley' is a common name in the county of Ireland where he comes from. I found out he lives in southern Cal and I asked him how he could stand the endlessness of the blue sky and the unending sunshine. He told me he played golf--'nuf said. I told him Ireland is the only place outside the US I think I could live--mostly for the fog and clouds and ubiquitous rain. People I talk to who start going on and on about the climate here are shaken and confused when I tell them I can't leave 'paradise' soon enough. I really think being in Anaheim much longer would make me long for snow and ice and the 15 hours of darkness in winter in CT. What my new Irish friend told me resonates with my psyche. I always thought Bradley was a British name, but since noone in my family has ever been able to trace us back across the Atlantic, maybe I'm a lot more Irish than I thought. I know Celtic music is my 'soul music' though
Bern--Italian and Hungarian to the core runs out of the room when I'm watching it on PBS! I kinda like thinking my half-Irish blood on my mother's side may be equaled by half-Irish DNA on my father's side. And I could live in Ireland.....
The hofd is like driving a Packard on the I-5 in Southern California. We are two days behind in our work with 2 days to go! We keep shortening debate and putting more things on the consent calendar that can be voted all at once. Everyone is a little tired and a lot crabby. And there is much more to do.
last thing: today we approved continuing in the Anglican Communion's conversation about a Covenant for the AC. I'm dead against it. The Covenant is being designed to make us a much more hierarchical church and taking privilege from the 39 churches to consentrate it in a communion wide rule of bishops and archbishops. That is antithetical to our polity and, I would suggest, totally un-Anglican. The 'four instruments of unity' under the covenant in its present form are: the Archbishop of Canterbury, the gathering of the Primates of the 39 churches, the Lambeth Conference (all bishops) and the Anglican Consultative Council made up of a bishop a priest and a lay person from each of the 39 churches. We would begin to look like the RC church with the ABC as Pope and the Primates as the College of Cardinals and the Lambeth Conference as the College of Bishops. As bad an idea as I can imagine or conceive of in my mind. I was one of a dozen or so of 814 who voted 'no', but I was proud of my vote. The key thing is this--any 'covenant' of any form must be approved by a GC and I have come to trust the GC this year. Almost all the other 38 churches could agree to it if their archbishop agreed with it. We are one of the few Anglican churches who doesn't have an Archbishop. We have a 'Presiding
Bishop" and she 'presides' rather than 'rules'.
I miss all of you back in CT. I miss Bern and Bela (our dog) and Luke (the only one of our two still living cats I like) and the staff I love at St. John's and the people there and clouds and thunderstorms and crabby people of the East Coast. I miss a familiar ocean and the cultural agreement we have back east to maintain that what you see is what you get. Lots of people at GC have told me how impressed they are with how polite and friendly all the workers in the hotels and resturants are. I could stand a little rudeness right now. Three sleeps and I'll be in Houston and Cleveland and Hartford and then home...home sweet home....
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
there's a new world a'comin'....
OK, I have to repent my last blog's lack of faith in the house of bishops. I got Jerry Caroon, our alternate, to sit in for me this afternoon so I could go to the Hof B and Listen to their conversation about D025 which I gave you in the last post and lamented how the bishops wouldn't pass it.
They did!!! 99-44 with two minor and insignificant amendments. The amendments means the resolution has to come back to the hofd, but, in my mind they don't matter and we should approve the amended version in a heartbeat.
The 'debate' they had for over an hour was remarkable for how cordial and moving it was. The highlight for me was after several bishops had spoken in opposition to the resolution, pointing out how it would so, so offend the Anglican Communion, Bishop Prince Singe of Rochester (I swear that's his name) got up and said something like this: I AM the Anglican Communion. I grew up in India and the Anglican Church in India was the only church who ministered to the 'untouchable' caste. They did so, starting churches and schools in the 'untouchable' castes villages knowing they would lose the upper castes who would not come to those churches and to those schools. 80% of the Anglicans in India are 'untouchables'. It is time the EC realized our ministry is to the 'untouchables' in our culture.
He had me from the first mention of 'untouchables'. Right now I have never felt so committed and connected and involved in our church as I am right now. All three of our bishops voted 'yes' and so did Bp. Ramos, formally one of our bishops who is now in Ecuador. I haven't yet fully appreciated what has happened and I am moved to tears when I try to imagine it. D025 has made true what is so.
One of the bishops in opposition to the resolution read a quote from the Archbishop of Canterbury, who told us in his sermon last week to 'tell the truth'. He lamented the action of the HofD and said the HofB had the opportunity to 'block' that action. Some bishops I talked with were, to put it mildly, pissed off that the ABCanterbury would 'dis our church in such a remarkably inappropriate way.
We may 'walk separately' for a season with some of our brothers and sisters in the AC. There will be a cost to what the AC does in reaction to D025. But, for the first time in my life as an Episcopalian, we have told the TRUTH about who we are. Such truth telling allows us to enter into dialog with the rest of the AC with nothing hidden.
I also realize that there are some in the EC that will be offended and pained by this resolution. I would direct them to the last 'resolve':
"Resolved, that the 76th GC acknowlege that members of the EC as of the AC, bases on careful study of the Holy Scriptures and in light of tradition and reason, are not of one mind, and Christians of good conscience disagree about some of these matters."
That is my understanding of Anglicanism. We need not agree on matters of the interpretation of Scripture or Doctrine so long as we are willing--in our disagreements--to worship as on Body.
After today I have to reassess and ponder my opinions of the House of
Bishops. A learning and transforming exercise to undertake. And, under the castor oil tree with Jonah, 'pondering is what I do...."
Talk with you tomorrow--day 7....Unlike the Creation story, the work is not done and we cannot say "it is good"....Love you all. JIM
They did!!! 99-44 with two minor and insignificant amendments. The amendments means the resolution has to come back to the hofd, but, in my mind they don't matter and we should approve the amended version in a heartbeat.
The 'debate' they had for over an hour was remarkable for how cordial and moving it was. The highlight for me was after several bishops had spoken in opposition to the resolution, pointing out how it would so, so offend the Anglican Communion, Bishop Prince Singe of Rochester (I swear that's his name) got up and said something like this: I AM the Anglican Communion. I grew up in India and the Anglican Church in India was the only church who ministered to the 'untouchable' caste. They did so, starting churches and schools in the 'untouchable' castes villages knowing they would lose the upper castes who would not come to those churches and to those schools. 80% of the Anglicans in India are 'untouchables'. It is time the EC realized our ministry is to the 'untouchables' in our culture.
He had me from the first mention of 'untouchables'. Right now I have never felt so committed and connected and involved in our church as I am right now. All three of our bishops voted 'yes' and so did Bp. Ramos, formally one of our bishops who is now in Ecuador. I haven't yet fully appreciated what has happened and I am moved to tears when I try to imagine it. D025 has made true what is so.
One of the bishops in opposition to the resolution read a quote from the Archbishop of Canterbury, who told us in his sermon last week to 'tell the truth'. He lamented the action of the HofD and said the HofB had the opportunity to 'block' that action. Some bishops I talked with were, to put it mildly, pissed off that the ABCanterbury would 'dis our church in such a remarkably inappropriate way.
We may 'walk separately' for a season with some of our brothers and sisters in the AC. There will be a cost to what the AC does in reaction to D025. But, for the first time in my life as an Episcopalian, we have told the TRUTH about who we are. Such truth telling allows us to enter into dialog with the rest of the AC with nothing hidden.
I also realize that there are some in the EC that will be offended and pained by this resolution. I would direct them to the last 'resolve':
"Resolved, that the 76th GC acknowlege that members of the EC as of the AC, bases on careful study of the Holy Scriptures and in light of tradition and reason, are not of one mind, and Christians of good conscience disagree about some of these matters."
That is my understanding of Anglicanism. We need not agree on matters of the interpretation of Scripture or Doctrine so long as we are willing--in our disagreements--to worship as on Body.
After today I have to reassess and ponder my opinions of the House of
Bishops. A learning and transforming exercise to undertake. And, under the castor oil tree with Jonah, 'pondering is what I do...."
Talk with you tomorrow--day 7....Unlike the Creation story, the work is not done and we cannot say "it is good"....Love you all. JIM
Sunday, July 12, 2009
D025 passes house of deputies
Perhaps more important than the passage of D025 to St. John's was the passage of a resolution on Hispanic/Latino ministry. The work that went into preparing a report on H/L ministry was superb. Pending what Program and Budget Committee has to do, $3.5 million was approved for work in the H/L community. I've talked to several people who work on the national level and they have heard of what we're doing at St. John's!!! Kudos to Armando Gonzalez and Mike Carroll. People know about your minisry at GC. Two people even said, "That's where Fr. Armando is," when I told them I was St. John's. Amazing--what a gift that ministry is to St. John's and the larger church.
I wrote earlier today about D025. It passed overwhelmingly. The vote--by orders--(after several attempts to change or weaken the resolution failed)was 77 yes, 22 no and 9 divided in the Lay Order and 74 yes, 20 no and 13 divided in the clerical order.
I probably explained 'voting by orders' in an earlier post, but a quick review is in order. In a vote by orders each diocese has 2 votes--one for the clergy and one for the laity. Since there are normally 4 lay and 4 clergy deputies in each diocese, the vote must be 4-0 or 3-1 to be either a yes or no. If the deputies in the lay or clergy order vote 2-2 it is recorded as 'divided' but counts as a 'no' vote...or 'not a yes' vote. CT, for example, had a 4-0 vote of the lay members and a 3-1 vote of the clergy members for yes. So Ct's 2 votes were both 'yes'. Confused yet?
At any rate it was over 70% 'yes'. That, it seems to me, can be considered a mandate. B033 was not explicitly overturned, but the obvious implication is that the 'urging' not to consecrate gay/lesbian nominees is made moot.
Now it goes to the bishops. The fear among progressives in the HofD is that the bishops might remove the 5th resolve and cause a standoff between the bishops and the deputies. Nobody I've talked to will dare 'give odds' on what might happen with the bishops. So the GC is holding it's breath until they act.
If I might express my opinion (something I obviously don't do much!!!) I would say the Bishops, as they deal with D025, hold not only the future of the Episcopal Church in their hands but the future of the Anglican Communion as well. But NOT in the way they might imagine. D025--go read it in the last blog--expresses a genuine desire to remain fully a part of the Anglican Communion AND to be true to the reality of the life of this particular and peculiar church. We are the only member of the AC who governs itself in a completely and transparently 'democratic' way. Most of the Primates of the AC, unlike our Presiding Bishop, have almost papal like power within their church. Whatever the Archbishop says, the church does. Someone today, in debate, said 22 of the other 38 churches in the AC are now, even with B033, in 'damaged communion' with the EC. I turned to Ellen Tillotson and said, "only 16 to go!" In a humorous and ironic way, I mean that. We have been duplicitous with the AC for years now--claiming we want to agree with them when absolutely everyone in the EC and the AC knows to what great extent we are already including gay/lesbian folks in our life and leadership. It is simply time to stop posing and tell the truth. This church is ready for the 'local option' about same sex blessings and election of bishops. We had 'local option' on women priests and bishops for two decades--no diocese HAD to accept it, but most would gladly. I pray the Hof B will relent their attempts at appeasement and coercion and 'speak the truth in love' to the rest of the AC. This is how we make decisions and this is who we are. We will not leave you but if you cannot walk with us, given our realities, then perhaps we must walk separately for a while.
The EC cannot be a strong and mission-driven church until we are honest about who we are. Our bishops were elected to LEAD. Instead, to much of the time, they hold back and give disinformation to the rest of the communion. Either we are a church where there are no outcasts, as PB Browning said at the last GC in Anaheim OR we are a church that betrays it's own members to the prejudices and often outright hatred of those far away. The best witness we can give to the AC is to be unashamedly and boldly "who we are" and call the AC to deal with us on that level.
Shame on the bishops if they emasculate or defeat D025. They have no reason to worry about my judgment. I only pray they fret and ponder the judgement of God--a God who includes all, with nobody left out.
The bishops are under the castor oil tree with Jonah. God chose to save Nineveh, to include those outcasts in the Kingdom. Our bishops can ponder where we are and who we are and claim our identity as followers of a God who includes all....Or they can hide behind demands on us from those who do not live under our constitution and canons and pretend to be a church willing to 'exclude' in order to be part of the flock.
(Last week was the 30th anniversary of the debute of Spike Lee's remarkable film "Do the Right Thing". How fast time flies...about the same time as Bp Browning's declaration of 'no outcasts' in this church.)
(a young lion was separated from his mother and raised by mountain goats. he became, as best he could, a mountain goat. he ate grass--though it tasted vile--and learned to say 'baa' and to run from any danger. one day, the goats were feeding on a mountain side and heard a dangerous and raucous noise from the valley below. The young lion bleeted and started to run, but something in that sound spoke to his heart. So, in fear and trembling, he crept to the edge of the hill and over it. There, by the side of a stream was a full grown lion, feeding on a his kill. He looked up and saw the young mountain-goat-lion. The mountain-goat-lion said "BAA" and ate a mouthful of grass.
"What are you doing?" the full grown lion asked him. "what was that strange noise and why are you eating grass? doesn't it taste vile?"
"Come over here," the lion said, "look in the stream with me." The cub who was a mountain lion went, though it took all his courage. In the mirror of the water he saw himself for the first time and saw the lion as well.
"I'm just like you!" the cub said. Then he took a bite of the lion's kill and roared his first roar.
"Never forget," the older lion said, "who you are and whose your are..."
For too long our bishops have been mountain goats when, in fact, they are lions. I pray that as they deliberate on D025, they will remember 'who they are and whose they are" and 'do the right thing'....
All is well and all is well and all manner of things will be well....
I wrote earlier today about D025. It passed overwhelmingly. The vote--by orders--(after several attempts to change or weaken the resolution failed)was 77 yes, 22 no and 9 divided in the Lay Order and 74 yes, 20 no and 13 divided in the clerical order.
I probably explained 'voting by orders' in an earlier post, but a quick review is in order. In a vote by orders each diocese has 2 votes--one for the clergy and one for the laity. Since there are normally 4 lay and 4 clergy deputies in each diocese, the vote must be 4-0 or 3-1 to be either a yes or no. If the deputies in the lay or clergy order vote 2-2 it is recorded as 'divided' but counts as a 'no' vote...or 'not a yes' vote. CT, for example, had a 4-0 vote of the lay members and a 3-1 vote of the clergy members for yes. So Ct's 2 votes were both 'yes'. Confused yet?
At any rate it was over 70% 'yes'. That, it seems to me, can be considered a mandate. B033 was not explicitly overturned, but the obvious implication is that the 'urging' not to consecrate gay/lesbian nominees is made moot.
Now it goes to the bishops. The fear among progressives in the HofD is that the bishops might remove the 5th resolve and cause a standoff between the bishops and the deputies. Nobody I've talked to will dare 'give odds' on what might happen with the bishops. So the GC is holding it's breath until they act.
If I might express my opinion (something I obviously don't do much!!!) I would say the Bishops, as they deal with D025, hold not only the future of the Episcopal Church in their hands but the future of the Anglican Communion as well. But NOT in the way they might imagine. D025--go read it in the last blog--expresses a genuine desire to remain fully a part of the Anglican Communion AND to be true to the reality of the life of this particular and peculiar church. We are the only member of the AC who governs itself in a completely and transparently 'democratic' way. Most of the Primates of the AC, unlike our Presiding Bishop, have almost papal like power within their church. Whatever the Archbishop says, the church does. Someone today, in debate, said 22 of the other 38 churches in the AC are now, even with B033, in 'damaged communion' with the EC. I turned to Ellen Tillotson and said, "only 16 to go!" In a humorous and ironic way, I mean that. We have been duplicitous with the AC for years now--claiming we want to agree with them when absolutely everyone in the EC and the AC knows to what great extent we are already including gay/lesbian folks in our life and leadership. It is simply time to stop posing and tell the truth. This church is ready for the 'local option' about same sex blessings and election of bishops. We had 'local option' on women priests and bishops for two decades--no diocese HAD to accept it, but most would gladly. I pray the Hof B will relent their attempts at appeasement and coercion and 'speak the truth in love' to the rest of the AC. This is how we make decisions and this is who we are. We will not leave you but if you cannot walk with us, given our realities, then perhaps we must walk separately for a while.
The EC cannot be a strong and mission-driven church until we are honest about who we are. Our bishops were elected to LEAD. Instead, to much of the time, they hold back and give disinformation to the rest of the communion. Either we are a church where there are no outcasts, as PB Browning said at the last GC in Anaheim OR we are a church that betrays it's own members to the prejudices and often outright hatred of those far away. The best witness we can give to the AC is to be unashamedly and boldly "who we are" and call the AC to deal with us on that level.
Shame on the bishops if they emasculate or defeat D025. They have no reason to worry about my judgment. I only pray they fret and ponder the judgement of God--a God who includes all, with nobody left out.
The bishops are under the castor oil tree with Jonah. God chose to save Nineveh, to include those outcasts in the Kingdom. Our bishops can ponder where we are and who we are and claim our identity as followers of a God who includes all....Or they can hide behind demands on us from those who do not live under our constitution and canons and pretend to be a church willing to 'exclude' in order to be part of the flock.
(Last week was the 30th anniversary of the debute of Spike Lee's remarkable film "Do the Right Thing". How fast time flies...about the same time as Bp Browning's declaration of 'no outcasts' in this church.)
(a young lion was separated from his mother and raised by mountain goats. he became, as best he could, a mountain goat. he ate grass--though it tasted vile--and learned to say 'baa' and to run from any danger. one day, the goats were feeding on a mountain side and heard a dangerous and raucous noise from the valley below. The young lion bleeted and started to run, but something in that sound spoke to his heart. So, in fear and trembling, he crept to the edge of the hill and over it. There, by the side of a stream was a full grown lion, feeding on a his kill. He looked up and saw the young mountain-goat-lion. The mountain-goat-lion said "BAA" and ate a mouthful of grass.
"What are you doing?" the full grown lion asked him. "what was that strange noise and why are you eating grass? doesn't it taste vile?"
"Come over here," the lion said, "look in the stream with me." The cub who was a mountain lion went, though it took all his courage. In the mirror of the water he saw himself for the first time and saw the lion as well.
"I'm just like you!" the cub said. Then he took a bite of the lion's kill and roared his first roar.
"Never forget," the older lion said, "who you are and whose your are..."
For too long our bishops have been mountain goats when, in fact, they are lions. I pray that as they deliberate on D025, they will remember 'who they are and whose they are" and 'do the right thing'....
All is well and all is well and all manner of things will be well....
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