Notebook
Today we have a big pow-wow with our full staff save for Shelley Fayette who is in Seattle doing her summer CPE. The occasion is Babs Meairs’ first quarterly trip to 815. As our new Field Coordinator she will check in with us in this way. You’d think with the Internet and conference calls that scheduling staid, old, traditional face-to face meetings were passé. You know otherwise.
Today is also the debut of the long-awaited iPhone. At $500 it can do everything: email, Internet, find destinations, TV, phone...I’m sure I missed something. When you’re packing such equipment how can anyone say that you are out of touch? It’s the strangest thing but sooner or later you will be. As social beings we crave a connection and will go to no small lengths to achieve it.
In Bab’s case because of bad weather her plane was re-routed to Boston, she slept on the airport floor waiting for another flight, it was delayed, when finally she boarded and was under way it circled New York for two hours. To make it worse the car service sent to pick her up was an hour late. Finally she arrived for her face-to face meeting with all of us 24 hours late with practically no sleep and having not eaten for nine hours.
One hopes the quality personal time is worth this kind of ordeal. It will always is for there we find in each other Christ waiting to greet us.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Chaplain Tally H. Jarrett, R.I.P.
Notebook
I received the stole and service medals of the late Chaplain Tally H. Jarrett (USAF-ret.) yesterday. According to the note from his widow Lillian, Tally died a year ago after a battle with cancer. It follows that a full year would pass before loved ones would take the full measure of things, sorting through belongings and trying to figure out where everything should eventually go. As Lillian said in her note to me, "I don't know anyone who could use his old Air Force stoles. They are probably out of date, but I don't know what to do with them."
I'm glad she sent them to us. We have a commitment to tenderly care for the belongings of deceased brothers and sisters until the next--and inevitable--challenge of ministry comes along.
The stole is on its way to Kuwait.
We give praise to you Lord for the life and work of your servant, Tally. May he rest with the Saints in Light. We pray this in Jesus' Name. Amen.
I received the stole and service medals of the late Chaplain Tally H. Jarrett (USAF-ret.) yesterday. According to the note from his widow Lillian, Tally died a year ago after a battle with cancer. It follows that a full year would pass before loved ones would take the full measure of things, sorting through belongings and trying to figure out where everything should eventually go. As Lillian said in her note to me, "I don't know anyone who could use his old Air Force stoles. They are probably out of date, but I don't know what to do with them."
I'm glad she sent them to us. We have a commitment to tenderly care for the belongings of deceased brothers and sisters until the next--and inevitable--challenge of ministry comes along.
The stole is on its way to Kuwait.
We give praise to you Lord for the life and work of your servant, Tally. May he rest with the Saints in Light. We pray this in Jesus' Name. Amen.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Our Service Prayer Book Revisions
Notebook
We are working on a great Herculean labor of this episcopacy in the revision of our old standby, "A Prayer Book for the Armed Services." Versions of the book have been around forever. I recall carrying a dog-eared copy of a forebear in my pocket in Vietnam.
Now we have a new publisher and encouraging feedback from chaplains both active and retired. You can view their comments in Registrar Andrew Gary's column, "The Registar's Corner" on our website. I read these suggestions with keen interest.
Some noted that if the audience is mostly non-Episcopalians and it is used primarily as an aid for personal devotions, and not necessarily a worship support, that the organization and content should take that into consideration. I hear that point and we will modify the piece but I want to keep the "gathering quality" for worship that some of the current text implies.
I agree completely that the confirmation rite can be omitted. And you have a receptive ear in me with, "Put in some singable hymns!" I have too many memories of struggling through the hymnody in various places throughout the world. There were other comments which caught my eye too...include prayers for deployment; put all the Spanish section in one part of the book; reduce the fussiness of rubrical directions; and re-print it in a more durable binding.
I'm sure there are more good comments out there and I look forward to reading your suggestions. Why not post them on this column or on Andrew's? As Eric Thompson (USA) concluded after a detailed evaluation, "May God look with favor upon us as we continue this great work."
We are working on a great Herculean labor of this episcopacy in the revision of our old standby, "A Prayer Book for the Armed Services." Versions of the book have been around forever. I recall carrying a dog-eared copy of a forebear in my pocket in Vietnam.
Now we have a new publisher and encouraging feedback from chaplains both active and retired. You can view their comments in Registrar Andrew Gary's column, "The Registar's Corner" on our website. I read these suggestions with keen interest.
Some noted that if the audience is mostly non-Episcopalians and it is used primarily as an aid for personal devotions, and not necessarily a worship support, that the organization and content should take that into consideration. I hear that point and we will modify the piece but I want to keep the "gathering quality" for worship that some of the current text implies.
I agree completely that the confirmation rite can be omitted. And you have a receptive ear in me with, "Put in some singable hymns!" I have too many memories of struggling through the hymnody in various places throughout the world. There were other comments which caught my eye too...include prayers for deployment; put all the Spanish section in one part of the book; reduce the fussiness of rubrical directions; and re-print it in a more durable binding.
I'm sure there are more good comments out there and I look forward to reading your suggestions. Why not post them on this column or on Andrew's? As Eric Thompson (USA) concluded after a detailed evaluation, "May God look with favor upon us as we continue this great work."
Friday, June 22, 2007
Bishop Clarence and Nell Hobgood Celebrate 67 Years!
Notebook
An email network for the House of Bishops has been preoccupied recently with a marriage contest to see who has been in blessed union the longest. At first I thought this was cute but with each round of boasted longevity I wondered about what it said to those who had married late in life, widowed, or divorced and remarried.
Of course the whole exercise is a generational thing, I guess: older couples comparing notches on their belts, who can blame them? But why not celebrate however and whenever the happy couple found each other?
I discovered that the persons who held the trophy had been married a mere 63 years. For some reason I had remembered that the Hobgoods (Clarence was the second full time Suffragan for the Armed Forces, '71-'78) were married in 1940 so they would be in their 68th year of marital bliss. I called them; they are doing very well and send greetings. I guess its one thing to philosophize about all this but when I can boost one of our own to win the marriage sweepstakes, well, that's another story! +gep
An email network for the House of Bishops has been preoccupied recently with a marriage contest to see who has been in blessed union the longest. At first I thought this was cute but with each round of boasted longevity I wondered about what it said to those who had married late in life, widowed, or divorced and remarried.
Of course the whole exercise is a generational thing, I guess: older couples comparing notches on their belts, who can blame them? But why not celebrate however and whenever the happy couple found each other?
I discovered that the persons who held the trophy had been married a mere 63 years. For some reason I had remembered that the Hobgoods (Clarence was the second full time Suffragan for the Armed Forces, '71-'78) were married in 1940 so they would be in their 68th year of marital bliss. I called them; they are doing very well and send greetings. I guess its one thing to philosophize about all this but when I can boost one of our own to win the marriage sweepstakes, well, that's another story! +gep
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Jeremiah Day is Being Promoted!
Notebook
I just received a call from Jeremiah (USNR) and he was delighted to tell me that sometime around October he will promoted to Commander. Those of us who know this fine chaplain and priest fretted when he left Active Duty, worried about his son Christopher when he had a health challenge (he's doing fine), and stayed current as he--in typical style--plunged into parish priesthood with his usual gusto. Still, even when on a stellar and extended deployment in Djibouti he demonstrated how much he is, and will always be, a chaplain. We are all very happy for him and Marian and I encouraged them to go out to dinner on the family, i.e, this episcopacy. (Send me the bill.) +gep
I just received a call from Jeremiah (USNR) and he was delighted to tell me that sometime around October he will promoted to Commander. Those of us who know this fine chaplain and priest fretted when he left Active Duty, worried about his son Christopher when he had a health challenge (he's doing fine), and stayed current as he--in typical style--plunged into parish priesthood with his usual gusto. Still, even when on a stellar and extended deployment in Djibouti he demonstrated how much he is, and will always be, a chaplain. We are all very happy for him and Marian and I encouraged them to go out to dinner on the family, i.e, this episcopacy. (Send me the bill.) +gep
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Networking, This Time for the Kingdom
Notebook
Please pray for Zachary. As a soldier with the 82nd Airborne, he was wounded two days ago in Iraq. We received a call, as we often do, requesting help to link his family with him as he anticipated an arrival at Landstuhl Army Hospital in Germany. As I have already written in this column we have considerable contacts--both locally assigned Episcopal chaplains at Ramstein AFB and staff chaplains who are acquaintances at the medical facility itself--and that is a bonanza.
Often it is a simple process of networking everyone into a series of email messages with highly successful results. When this kind of disaster strikes assisting a family in building mere connections can make all the difference.
So, in this case it was getting Zack's Mom, his priest, our chaplain at Ramstein, and the ward chaplain at the hospital all on board. It makes a day in the office pretty special when we can pull this kind of thing together. +gep
Please pray for Zachary. As a soldier with the 82nd Airborne, he was wounded two days ago in Iraq. We received a call, as we often do, requesting help to link his family with him as he anticipated an arrival at Landstuhl Army Hospital in Germany. As I have already written in this column we have considerable contacts--both locally assigned Episcopal chaplains at Ramstein AFB and staff chaplains who are acquaintances at the medical facility itself--and that is a bonanza.
Often it is a simple process of networking everyone into a series of email messages with highly successful results. When this kind of disaster strikes assisting a family in building mere connections can make all the difference.
So, in this case it was getting Zack's Mom, his priest, our chaplain at Ramstein, and the ward chaplain at the hospital all on board. It makes a day in the office pretty special when we can pull this kind of thing together. +gep
Friday, June 15, 2007
News of the Family and Executive Council
Notebook
News in our episcopacy: Karen Brandon (USA) is going to be married to The Rev. Chester King in December! The couple plans to retire soon and live in San Antonio. Bob Eldridge (USA) and his wife Lee were gearing up for retirement in early 2008 but now the Chief of Chaplains has asked him to extend to October; Stuart Kenworthy (ANG) was surprised and gratified to receive a Bronze Star for meritorious service at his recent retirement ceremony (this was Stuart's second retirement--he had re-enlisted to accompany his unit to Iraq!); Babs Meairs is firmly in her new job as the new Field Coordinator and has already attended conferences in California and Texas as a representative of this office; congratulations to Ira Houck (USA) and his recent promotion to LTC; Wendy Sirotko wrote to me about her husband Ted (USA-ret.) about his disc surgery to alleviate neck/shoulder pain. Brother Ted didn't have any discs between four vertebrae; and they say there are no consequences to jogging in combat boots! He is comfortable save for the temporary neck brace and we all give thanks for this intervention and pray for his continued recovery.
**** **** ****
One of the mind numbing experiences that go with this job is attending Executive Council meetings. The Executive Council functions like a vestry for the entire Episcopal Church between sittings of the General Convention by meeting three times a year. The gatherings are rotated among the provinces and in this way the hope is that nearly every diocese will get a crack at hosting the event.
Don't get me wrong the people are wonderful but I can't believe anyone truly enjoys themselves during these experiences. Think of back to back committee meetings over a four day period. It has all the appeal of coming to town for a week long convention three times a year. Our new leadership--PB Katherine Jefferts-Schori and House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson--are applying creative ways to keep things interesting and engaged but the plain truth of it is that for responsive representation to work brave people must put up with the drudgery of committee meetings and then pass resolutions which record the results of their discussions.
This last session was significant for its affirmation of the House of Bishops stand on the Primates' Communique. In effect, the Executive Council said (and developed through a series of those weary committee meetings) that the request from the Primates could not get a response short of another General Convention.
Sitting through this process, though, may be tedious but what else is the Church to do? The Executive Council has strained and pulled at its length of days, tucking here, nipping there so now they meet one day less than before. They even have a well-developed computer list serve system which keeps all forty members on top of things even when they're supposed to be off duty.
As I look around the room during such experiences I try to think of where each person has come from in the country, the dioceses that elected them to the General Convention, and even their home parish. It helps to think in this kind of progression because it grounds the political process back to ordinary people sitting in pews, worshipping God, having coffee and cake during a social hour, and worrying about which shut-in should get the altar flowers from that Sunday. +gep
News in our episcopacy: Karen Brandon (USA) is going to be married to The Rev. Chester King in December! The couple plans to retire soon and live in San Antonio. Bob Eldridge (USA) and his wife Lee were gearing up for retirement in early 2008 but now the Chief of Chaplains has asked him to extend to October; Stuart Kenworthy (ANG) was surprised and gratified to receive a Bronze Star for meritorious service at his recent retirement ceremony (this was Stuart's second retirement--he had re-enlisted to accompany his unit to Iraq!); Babs Meairs is firmly in her new job as the new Field Coordinator and has already attended conferences in California and Texas as a representative of this office; congratulations to Ira Houck (USA) and his recent promotion to LTC; Wendy Sirotko wrote to me about her husband Ted (USA-ret.) about his disc surgery to alleviate neck/shoulder pain. Brother Ted didn't have any discs between four vertebrae; and they say there are no consequences to jogging in combat boots! He is comfortable save for the temporary neck brace and we all give thanks for this intervention and pray for his continued recovery.
**** **** ****
One of the mind numbing experiences that go with this job is attending Executive Council meetings. The Executive Council functions like a vestry for the entire Episcopal Church between sittings of the General Convention by meeting three times a year. The gatherings are rotated among the provinces and in this way the hope is that nearly every diocese will get a crack at hosting the event.
Don't get me wrong the people are wonderful but I can't believe anyone truly enjoys themselves during these experiences. Think of back to back committee meetings over a four day period. It has all the appeal of coming to town for a week long convention three times a year. Our new leadership--PB Katherine Jefferts-Schori and House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson--are applying creative ways to keep things interesting and engaged but the plain truth of it is that for responsive representation to work brave people must put up with the drudgery of committee meetings and then pass resolutions which record the results of their discussions.
This last session was significant for its affirmation of the House of Bishops stand on the Primates' Communique. In effect, the Executive Council said (and developed through a series of those weary committee meetings) that the request from the Primates could not get a response short of another General Convention.
Sitting through this process, though, may be tedious but what else is the Church to do? The Executive Council has strained and pulled at its length of days, tucking here, nipping there so now they meet one day less than before. They even have a well-developed computer list serve system which keeps all forty members on top of things even when they're supposed to be off duty.
As I look around the room during such experiences I try to think of where each person has come from in the country, the dioceses that elected them to the General Convention, and even their home parish. It helps to think in this kind of progression because it grounds the political process back to ordinary people sitting in pews, worshipping God, having coffee and cake during a social hour, and worrying about which shut-in should get the altar flowers from that Sunday. +gep
Monday, June 4, 2007
Memorial Day Missed, Another Comes Too Quickly (Jim Kelsey)
Notebook
It was a full two weeks ago that Dick Wright said to me at a dinner with the Fort Leavenworth eucharistic community that he enjoyed reading the entries to this column. Sorry, Dick, I didn't anticipate the extent of the post operative fog for this innocuous ventral hernia procedure. Post general anaesthesia gives you that spectator relationship with your own self, I'm told.
Memorial Day weekend arrived yet was barely interrupted by any "memorial." Our consumer ways often conspire on such holidays, nothing new there. But for me, a major disorientation came from sitting in front of the TV in a vicotin stupor not caring what passed before my eyes. Now that's hell.
This fuzzy sense of things was a distortion of what should have been. As I've written on other M-days we all have a vital part in such memorial ceremonies whether it be as recollected on the corroded plaques of pristine beaches in the southwest Pacific or something said as recently as last Monday about those seven souls who died in Iraq on Memorial Day, 2007. As any veteran will tell you what is said can be a platitude and easily forgettable if it isn't attended with a sense of connection.
When I copied verse from a memorial in Garapan, Saipan it seemed too poetic a description for those who had met such a tragic end...almost someone's version of having lost their way in the labyrinth of an English garden. It was only after reading the narration of the landing that you are truly filled with sober admiration. During Operation Forager, June-July, 1944, 5050 Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen died fighting in "24 days and nights of close and deadly ground combat" to capture the islands of Saipan and Tinian.
Last Sunday the post operative haze lifted and we received the terrible news that Bishop Jim Kelsey had died in a car crash while returning from a visitation that afternoon. A great sorrow washed over Brook and me as we worried about his wife Mary and their family. As I read the tributes to him tumble out over the Internet I realized we all knew the same Jim Kelsey yet each of us felt a very special, personal connection with the man.
In my case he was my table leader in the House of Bishops during the 2003-2006 triennium. He was always a caring friend who regularly checked in with me and this episcopacy. He was the epitome of the young, fresh person in the House of Bishops; his insistence on a church totally mobilized and engaged on all levels will be but one of his legacies. Moreover, and with such irony, in the next day's mail I received a letter from Jim Kelsey telling me about a new program he had created in his diocese to keep track of all those about to be deployed and those who had just returned.
So in Saipan as elsewhere scattered across the Pacific under the welcome shade of red blossomed blumeria and in soft by ways deceptively simple monuments wait for you and me to read, "(Life) drew them from their homeland in the sunlit morning of their youth. Those who did not come back remain in perpetual Springtime, forever young, and part of us is with them always."
You may have miss one memorial day but you can bet there will soon be another. +gep
It was a full two weeks ago that Dick Wright said to me at a dinner with the Fort Leavenworth eucharistic community that he enjoyed reading the entries to this column. Sorry, Dick, I didn't anticipate the extent of the post operative fog for this innocuous ventral hernia procedure. Post general anaesthesia gives you that spectator relationship with your own self, I'm told.
Memorial Day weekend arrived yet was barely interrupted by any "memorial." Our consumer ways often conspire on such holidays, nothing new there. But for me, a major disorientation came from sitting in front of the TV in a vicotin stupor not caring what passed before my eyes. Now that's hell.
This fuzzy sense of things was a distortion of what should have been. As I've written on other M-days we all have a vital part in such memorial ceremonies whether it be as recollected on the corroded plaques of pristine beaches in the southwest Pacific or something said as recently as last Monday about those seven souls who died in Iraq on Memorial Day, 2007. As any veteran will tell you what is said can be a platitude and easily forgettable if it isn't attended with a sense of connection.
When I copied verse from a memorial in Garapan, Saipan it seemed too poetic a description for those who had met such a tragic end...almost someone's version of having lost their way in the labyrinth of an English garden. It was only after reading the narration of the landing that you are truly filled with sober admiration. During Operation Forager, June-July, 1944, 5050 Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen died fighting in "24 days and nights of close and deadly ground combat" to capture the islands of Saipan and Tinian.
Last Sunday the post operative haze lifted and we received the terrible news that Bishop Jim Kelsey had died in a car crash while returning from a visitation that afternoon. A great sorrow washed over Brook and me as we worried about his wife Mary and their family. As I read the tributes to him tumble out over the Internet I realized we all knew the same Jim Kelsey yet each of us felt a very special, personal connection with the man.
In my case he was my table leader in the House of Bishops during the 2003-2006 triennium. He was always a caring friend who regularly checked in with me and this episcopacy. He was the epitome of the young, fresh person in the House of Bishops; his insistence on a church totally mobilized and engaged on all levels will be but one of his legacies. Moreover, and with such irony, in the next day's mail I received a letter from Jim Kelsey telling me about a new program he had created in his diocese to keep track of all those about to be deployed and those who had just returned.
So in Saipan as elsewhere scattered across the Pacific under the welcome shade of red blossomed blumeria and in soft by ways deceptively simple monuments wait for you and me to read, "(Life) drew them from their homeland in the sunlit morning of their youth. Those who did not come back remain in perpetual Springtime, forever young, and part of us is with them always."
You may have miss one memorial day but you can bet there will soon be another. +gep
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