Notebook
27 September 2007
I greeted the input from some our chaplains and priests in Micronesia with special appreciation. I even went to the microphone and quoted some of them verbatim from my Blackberry to the Archbishop! They are: Dedra Bell, Frank Munoz, Jeff Neuberger, Ira Houck, Babs Meairs, Gerry Blackburn, Vic McInnis, Ben Helmer, Jere Hinson, David Thames, Dave Scheider, Roy Hoffman, Stan Fornea, Mike Carr, Irene Maliaman, Michael Pumphrey, Gianni Martin, Brad Ableson, Mark Winward, Kris Coppinger, Jon Hollenbeck.
If your name isn't listed here and you sent in a message please contact me since I have been asked to give a summary of our chaplains' sentiments. This also means any other more chaplains who would like to have their points of view can still contact me too. Thank you all.
My optimism about this meeting came in part from the great impression of Archbishop Rowan Williams made on everyone. He spoke to us four times and elucidated what he thought his role was as well as challenged us to think about ours in this predicament. He saw his function in three parts; in interpretation, in mediation, and providing a brokerage for opinion. That last one needed expansion for me which he provided. The ABC (Archbishop of Canterbury) believes he is called to assure that we listen to each other and that we step off together. This aspect of his work also has the task of minimizing destructive conflict. This brokering also supports taking risks so that trust can build and so that people can remain involved. It is a calamity if we turn our backs on each other, he feels.
"Common discernment" is the goal, he said and indeed we are the servants of this effort in Our Lord’s Name for none finds truth alone since we are always learning to draw upon the Christ in each other. In this way a bishop nurtures the development of a common language and models such effort on the gathering words in the Holy Eucharist. This is so that the Church can "speak bigger than it knows."
The ABC said we were not discussing sexuality but ecclesiology. "How does the church act as church and how can we have the clarity we need to proceed well in advance of any common discernment?” he asked. Archbishop Williams said we have the tension to have a fidelity with gay and lesbian persons and the tension to be about a common discernment in these times.
I think his presence--and the encouragement of other Anglican leaders form around the globe--was the reason we adopted a conservative stance at this meeting. It was also a time Bishop Katherine could debut her proposition to have alternative pastoral bishops represent her in certain dioceses.
During other parts of this week on the Gulf Coast Brook and I visited with Navy Chaplain Dedra Bell and her family as well as visited St. Mark’s Gulfport again nearly two years after Katrina. The last time I was there the congregation was meeting in an elementary school. Today they are in attractive modular housing adjacent to the construction of a new building site. +gep
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
House of Bishops Come Through
Notebook
Wednesday, 26 September 2007
Sorry that it took until today for this posting but a check in with the TEC website could give you a blow by blow update on this historic meeting of the House of Bishops here in New Orleans.
I'm writing this at a computer console here in the hotel lobby at 6 AM and I'll add to it when I get home in a couple of hours. I was skeptical about the chances that this gathering would make a difference in the tension between a fact of social justice (gay and lesbian recognition in the Church) and the tension of remaining in contact with the greater Church. It seems we might have pulled this off. To accomplish this--and I'll write more later--we re-stated that we are inhibiting ourselves on consecrations which give pain to the Communion and a previously stated stance about authorizing same sex blessings. That point is slippery because there are a number of rites out there which are used for pastoral reasons but are not authorized. There are more details I'll address later having to do with whether Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire attends Lambeth next summer and how he would be received by conservative African bishops.
More later...have to catch this plane.+gep
Wednesday, 26 September 2007
Sorry that it took until today for this posting but a check in with the TEC website could give you a blow by blow update on this historic meeting of the House of Bishops here in New Orleans.
I'm writing this at a computer console here in the hotel lobby at 6 AM and I'll add to it when I get home in a couple of hours. I was skeptical about the chances that this gathering would make a difference in the tension between a fact of social justice (gay and lesbian recognition in the Church) and the tension of remaining in contact with the greater Church. It seems we might have pulled this off. To accomplish this--and I'll write more later--we re-stated that we are inhibiting ourselves on consecrations which give pain to the Communion and a previously stated stance about authorizing same sex blessings. That point is slippery because there are a number of rites out there which are used for pastoral reasons but are not authorized. There are more details I'll address later having to do with whether Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire attends Lambeth next summer and how he would be received by conservative African bishops.
More later...have to catch this plane.+gep
Monday, September 10, 2007
Letter to Chaplains at Ground Zero
Bishop's Notebook
Eve of September 11, 2007
Dear Friends:
Yesterday I passed another car on the road which had this sign scrawled across the back window, "We will never forget 9/11!" I honked my horn in acknowledgement of his message and he tapped his horn back. As he turned off and we parted ways I wondered about that exchange. The driver was dressed like a construction worker--who knows what he really did--and looked like one of the iron workers who inhabited the pile starting on Day Two. Besides the firefighters and the cops I recall that they gave us all a sense of hope with their forceful energy, a contrast to the daze most us were still in as we tried to comprehend what had just happened.
It was one of those iron workers who had given me the old zip-top beer can which is in my office to this day. He had found a stash of them when a beam joint popped open during the cleanup. Alcohol was prohibited on the construction site but apparently the beers were consumed 37 years ago on one of the Twin Towers as it rose in the air--perhaps during a lunch hour--and to avoid detection the drinkers entombed the discards sealing them shut with a blowtorch. Iron workers erected the WTC and they were there to mind its deconstruction. What rare keepers of a story and perhaps I passed such a person on the road yesterday. And chaplains are keepers of the story too. There is a tendency to co-opt and re-do the terror and uncertainty of those days as the drama is passed on by those who were never there. I have written before about that phenomenon and in truth everywhere was Ground Zero on September 11th.
But I am talking about the deeply personal and intense experience you had. Yours was a moment of service as a chaplain which touched and transformed others in ways you will never know. I receive a lot of calls and messages at this time each year from all those who have gratitude for the things you did at that time. I often wish I could put you on the phone because the call is not for me. They want to speak to, "so and so chaplain"--they can't remember her/his name--"who served near the Salvation Army tent or at St. Paul’s.”
So, I salute you on the eve of the anniversary of that awful day saying what an honor it was to be with you as we prayed for those who were lost, searched for them, and consoled those who were left behind. That's a memory no one can pass on. You had to be there and you were. +gep
Eve of September 11, 2007
Dear Friends:
Yesterday I passed another car on the road which had this sign scrawled across the back window, "We will never forget 9/11!" I honked my horn in acknowledgement of his message and he tapped his horn back. As he turned off and we parted ways I wondered about that exchange. The driver was dressed like a construction worker--who knows what he really did--and looked like one of the iron workers who inhabited the pile starting on Day Two. Besides the firefighters and the cops I recall that they gave us all a sense of hope with their forceful energy, a contrast to the daze most us were still in as we tried to comprehend what had just happened.
It was one of those iron workers who had given me the old zip-top beer can which is in my office to this day. He had found a stash of them when a beam joint popped open during the cleanup. Alcohol was prohibited on the construction site but apparently the beers were consumed 37 years ago on one of the Twin Towers as it rose in the air--perhaps during a lunch hour--and to avoid detection the drinkers entombed the discards sealing them shut with a blowtorch. Iron workers erected the WTC and they were there to mind its deconstruction. What rare keepers of a story and perhaps I passed such a person on the road yesterday. And chaplains are keepers of the story too. There is a tendency to co-opt and re-do the terror and uncertainty of those days as the drama is passed on by those who were never there. I have written before about that phenomenon and in truth everywhere was Ground Zero on September 11th.
But I am talking about the deeply personal and intense experience you had. Yours was a moment of service as a chaplain which touched and transformed others in ways you will never know. I receive a lot of calls and messages at this time each year from all those who have gratitude for the things you did at that time. I often wish I could put you on the phone because the call is not for me. They want to speak to, "so and so chaplain"--they can't remember her/his name--"who served near the Salvation Army tent or at St. Paul’s.”
So, I salute you on the eve of the anniversary of that awful day saying what an honor it was to be with you as we prayed for those who were lost, searched for them, and consoled those who were left behind. That's a memory no one can pass on. You had to be there and you were. +gep
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