Lambeth Day 16 – 8/2/2008

A room with a view.

For the last two and a half weeks, this has been mine. The above photograph is taken from the one window in my quite comfortable single dorm room in Rutherford College, at the University of Kent. As you can see, I look out on a huge blue tent, appropriately named The Big Top, in which are held all worship services and plenary sessions of the Lambeth Conference, accompanied by its conveniently situated Portaloos in the foreground. Almost every time there is something going on in The Big Top, I am in it (the tent, that is), save for the twice-daily choir rehearsals which are a delight to hear through my open window. Therefore, it is both a graceful and a quiet scene upon which I look.

It would be shamefully easy to make the obvious comments about this sort of tent and the activities one usually associates with it, so I will. While Lambeth 2008 has decidedly not been a circus, one does spot the occasional ecclesiastical acrobat, clown, side-show artist, ringleader, and lion-tamer. I confess to have even taken a turn as the guy who follows the theological elephant with a wheelbarrow and broom.

Most of the time, however, I have found myself feeling a number of things we often go to the circus to feel: awe, excitement, admiration, empathy, delight, joy, and wonder. In The Big Top have been transported by moving liturgies, inspired by stirring homilies, challenged by the reflections of the Archbishop of Canterbury and other lecturers, brought to tears by images from the cyclone in Myanmar, and warmed by the companionship of Christians from around the world who have gathered daily with me to be fed by Jesus.

One circus character who is missing is the one who stands out in the street yelling, “Come one, come all!” In the Anglican Communion we are some distance from an authentic invitation of that universal an inclusivity. Come one, come all. I understand far better today than I did when I unpacked my bag in the shadow of The Big Top why in some parts of the Communion it is impossible to make such an invitation, an invitation to all roles in the Church without regard to human sexuality, and why in other parts of the Communion it is impossible not to. That more full understanding has not resulted in my own convictions on these matters being changed. Indeed, each time I take in the view from my room I can’t help but see those who have been left outside the tent, or only invited in if they will refrain from being fully the persons they know God has made them to be. But it has resulted in my turning more helplessly and hopefully to God to lead us forward.

Much of the hurt in the Church that is caused by our conflicting attitudes about homosexuality and our actions toward homosexuals is exactly where it ought to be, in the Church. The Church is made for the hurt of the world. Yet a considerable amount of it remains outside. Perhaps what most separates us from the healing God yearns to give us are the tent flaps.

Lambeth Day 15 – 8/1/2008

On a handful of occasions during the past two weeks, I have taken the time to look at a newspaper or read a few on-line articles published by the North American and British press. From what I read there about the Lambeth Conference and the Anglican Communion, I imagine that this might well look to the outside like Dysfunction Junction. I console myself with the knowledge that you are discerning readers (especially you who are reading this blog) who recognize that the biggest headlines seem to be made by bishops and archbishops who are not in attendance, and you understand well that news outlets are engaged in a commercial activity whose success depends on the excitement that they can generate out of any particular story. The fact is that little, if any, of what we are doing at the Lambeth Conference is very exciting in the ways that sell newspapers. Put another way, any Good News we can offer is not exactly the good and juicy news for which they are hoping.

So I want to suggest that the depiction of Lambeth 2008 by the religious and secular press as a trade show of our character defects is in most regards a construct of both their frustration with the lack of a story so far and the need to provide something that sells. At the same time, I want to say that in some important ways that is exactly what this gathering is. Were the bishops of the Anglican Communion to come together for this amount of time and not present to one another the challenges, obstacles, difficulties, and wretched personality traits that make becoming the body of Christ so elusive, it would be a tragic waste.

Of course we want the world to see us as well ordered, good natured, mutually affectionate, common minded, and singularly focused on the travails of the world and the salvation of its peoples. That is why we dress up so nicely on Sundays and organize so well for group photos. But in the end we are indeed as most describe us, a family of churches. With determination and a little luck we can make it through Thanksgiving dinner, yet stick around for a while and who we really are will doubtless emerge.

Some of you know that I was quite resistant to the prospect of spending three weeks at this particular family gathering. As we approach our final weekend together, I find that the difficult and sometimes joyful challenge of living and working with the character defects we each bring is paying off. I have endlessly had to confront my own judgementalism, resentfulness, anger, entitlement, self-certainty, and condescension, especially as I have all too quickly identified the same in others. Through individual relationships and group labors, we have been getting somewhere worthy. Among other things, we are coming to understand, and in many cases accept, the reality of who each is, and thereby do we catch the occasional glimpse of what God may see us all to be.

Do not expect for the hard and rewarding work of this conference to result in a tidy product. That would be neither honest nor faithful. If you need tidy, the official photo will have to suffice.

God knows that we are a messy lot. The world may as well know it, too.

Lambeth Day 14 – 7/31/2008

Sex. (Sorry, no photo today.)

Today’s Indaba topic was Listening to God and Each Other – The Bishop and human sexuality. I am not sure what you are imagining, but I suspect it is not very close. The Indaba, however, was very productive and bore the fruits of our having labored together for over two weeks now. After viewing a 10 minute film in which people from across the Communion spoke frankly and personally about how the Church’s varied stances on and responses to homosexuality affect them, we gathered in our Bible Study groups and talked with equal openness about how the Communion’s engagement (and some would rightly claim, non-engagement) of issues of human sexuality has influenced the ministry and mission of our dioceses and provinces.

In our group it was not an easy conversation, though there were no surprises. Because we have been clear all along with each other about our perspectives and theologies, both certain and uncertain, we were able to get beyond the usual roadblocks and, with some mutual encouragement, imagine not so much what we might need from others to move forward together, but what we could each give. The most interesting thing to me is that it was not a list of what we could give up. It was indeed things we could give. Room. Respect, both for divergent understandings and diverse cultural realities. Companionship. A model, by how we live as a Communion, for the people of our own dioceses as they struggle to live with many great and difficult differences.

Our Bible Sudy group is not made up of like-minded Christians, though I am convinced that for each of us, our convictions about human sexuality and sexual behavior come from a deep and genuine intimacy with Jesus Christ. It is amazing, given that common relationship, that we are so different. Among the eight of us, we have both conservative and liberal bishops from England, Australia, and North America. We have both conservative and liberal bishops from Africa. We have bishops who ordain gays and lesbians in committed relationships, bishops who will not, and a bishop in whose native language there is no word for homosexual. It sometimes astounds me that we can even have these conversations, and then it astounds me that for so long we have not. What most astounds me is the prevalent fear that we will not be able to figure out how to stay together.

I am wondering if that really is our job. Mightn’t our job at this moment be simply to want to stay together, and then to muster both the humility to bring that genuine desire to God and the trust that God will know what to do with us? “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9) I’m counting on that, God. And I’m praying that the rest of us, all of us, will have the grace and patience to learn your thoughts, whatever they are, together. Just as our topic today suggested: Listening to God and Each Other. We never seem to get very far learning them apart.

Lambeth Day 13 - 7/29/2008

By the end of today, Tuesday, I will have completed two weeks in Canterbury. At this point in the conference there are numerous hearings and discussion meetings about the Windsor Process, the Draft Covenant, and the Lambeth Conference Reflection, a paper that will be issued describing what has transpired within and among us over the course of our time and labor here. I have been diligent in attending these. Because the bishops of The Episcopal Church constitute more than one fifth of those attending Lambeth 2008, we sometimes appear to dominate the conversation and testimony offered at the larger venues. As a result, and because much of what I feel gets articulated by other speakers, I have so far limited my testimony to the smaller settings. An alternative contribution, and one equally valued by the committees addressed, can be made in writing.

Today I have submitted such a statement to both the Windsor Continuation Group and the Covenant Design Committee. It reads as follows:


I am Mark Hollingsworth, Bishop of the Diocese of Ohio in the Province of The Episcopal Church.

Every election year, the State of Ohio becomes what is known as a “battleground state.” Because of its great political diversity, it is very much up for grabs for political candidates, especially presidential nominees. The Diocese of Ohio reflects the same broad diversity of political conviction in the breadth of theology and ecclesiology held by its congregations and communicants. In this way we are very much a microcosm of the larger Church. Yet, in the midst of our great differences and differentness, the vast majority of our members are finding ways to live together as one Church. One congregation receives Designated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight from a neighboring bishop, and remains an active part of the ministry and mission of the diocese. Many parishes serve together in common mission projects as a way to learn how to make room for one another. Together we are finding a unity by accommodation, rather than by assimilation.

At the same time, there are some who have chosen to leave the Diocese and affiliate with other provinces of the Communion. In large part that is a direct result of the interference and many incursions of bishops and archbishops from foreign jurisdictions which have driven deep wedges in our community of faith. The damage to Christ’s body that this constitutes is immeasurable.

The vast majority of us, however, have come to the shared conviction that we are each members of the Diocese of Ohio and The Episcopal Church at God’s invitation. It is an invitation that may have been delivered by a friend, a family member, a neighbor, or a co-worker, but it was without question God’s invitation. Each of us, regardless of her perspective or conviction on any of the issues that challenge us, is there as legitimately as the next. And we are subsequently becoming aware that, given what an odd lot we are, it is not agreement that God is offering us. If our agreeing with one another were the divine intention, God would doubtless have started with a more likely group. Rather it is a unity in diversity that God has called us together to explore, a unity more challenging than any we have yet achieved, one we are coming to imagine may resemble the very heart of God.

So why is God offering us this deep and difficult unity? We live in a world that is spinning into ever-increasing polarization, desperate to learn how to live with great differences. If, as the Churches of the Anglican Communion, we cannot learn how to live with the differences God has called together in the body of Christ, then we have no witness to make, nothing to offer the world that yearns for direction and help.

During the months that preceded this conference, I met with groups of lay and ordained leaders across our diocese to discuss with them the St. Andrew’s Draft Covenant. These included members of the Standing Committee, the Diocesan Council, the Episcopal Church Women, the Deputies to the General Convention, and others. Each group reflected the broad diversity of theology and ecclesiology that we have come to recognize as that which God has brought together in us as a diocese. And each group asked me to express to you a similar message, that a covenant which protects the rich diversity that constitutes the Anglican Communion and humbly offers to the world a model for how people can live together with great differences is something they would embrace.

They believe, however, that the St. Andrew’s Draft Covenant will serve only to institutionalize our inability to live with one another and with the very differences God has brought together among and through us. It is, to their eye and to mine, a pre-modern solution to a post-modern situation, an either/or proposition when a both/and is needed, designed not to help us make room for one another, but to distance us from each other and refuse the very gifts of differentness God is giving us in bringing us together as Anglicans. In this way, and especially through the proposed processes for consultation articulated in Section 3.2.5.a-e and in the Appendix, Sections 3 through 8, the St. Andrew’s Draft takes on the substance and effect of an anti-covenant, defining not how we become one but how we become separate.

Likewise does the Windsor Continuation Group’s proposal to ban the blessing of same-sex relationships and the ordination of homosexuals in committed relationships seek to legislate a restrictive solution that will, by definition, excise a considerable number of Christians whose place in the Diocese of Ohio and The Episcopal Church has proved to be an essential blessing to God’s mission and our ministry. The consequence will surely be that our diocese and the General Convention of The Episcopal Church will find it impossible to accede to that demand of communion.

We in the Anglican Communion may indeed have irreconcilable differences. But irreconcilable differences are nothing to be afraid of; irreconcilable is generally what differences are. God calls people to be reconciled, not their differences. God calls us to be reconciled precisely in spite of and because of our differences.

Let us have a covenant, but let it be a covenant, like those in Holy Scripture, that will show the world not how people separate themselves from one another, but how people with great differences come together in communion with God and each other. Let it be a covenant that will show the world how a diverse people can find a holy unity, and by that unity with God and one another grow into godliness, into the full stature of Christ, in whom all are reconciled and redeemed. This is an opportunity and a responsibility we dare not drop.

Lambeth Day 12 - 7/28/2008

This evening brought an extraordinary and powerful lecture by Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Among so many exceptional sermons and presentations, his has to date topped the list. His subject was covenant, and while the written text will not reflect the energy and passion of his delivery, the words themselves will surely inform and move you as profoundly as they did those in attendance. You will find the text of the lecture at http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1912. I urge you to read it.

Rabbi Sacks’s words about covenant and betrothal touch a particularly personal note with me as Sue and I will mark 20 years of marriage this Wednesday. She will by then be back in Ohio, while I remain at the conference through its conclusion in a week. Of course, it is not where we are on that or any specific day that matters, but where we have been over these twenty years and where we are willing to go from here.

Covenants and betrothals are dependent upon the generous willingness of involved parties to move toward one another, and in so doing, to bring together their authentic selves. Therefore, covenants also require a generous acceptance of who the other is, and a willingness to accommodate whatever it is that can be genuinely offered. While what is exchanged in a contract is power or wealth, what is exchanged in a covenant, by giving and forgiving, are trust, forbearance, and companionship. It seems to me that the generosity required by covenants is measured by what each is able to give, not by what the other needs. The model generosity of the widow in Jesus’ story was measured not by what was determined as another’s need but by the mite, what she alone discerned she was able to give.

If we are to explore a covenant in the Anglican Communion, beyond the tacit covenant of missional companionship and common prayer that we now incarnate, it will need to be a generous commitment of who we fully are, and a full acceptance or taking in of who the other is. It will need to reflect the mathematics of love, wherein the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and what we give away results in gain for both the giver and the recipient. If, on the other hand, what we create is juridical, having legal consequences for not meeting whatever the other needs, it will ultimately only be a contract for the purposes of exercising power. I fear that such an arrangement would not much look like any of the things to which Jesus likened the kingdom of heaven.

Lambeth Day 11 - 7/27/2008

Sunday. Sue and I went to Canterbury Cathedral for worship this morning. The sermon, preached by the Dean, the Very Rev. Robert Willis, was excellent. He is a thoughtful and able wordsmith, a poet who has written some of the most substantive and moving hymn texts of our own time. It was a privilege to hear him preach. The music offered by the Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys was evanescent and beautiful. The liturgy of the Eucharist, presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury, was at the same time both dignified and eminently accessible. Despite the lofty context, it was very down to earth.

What most captured my attention, and thus my prayer, was the space itself. Anything but down to earth, it is huge and soaring, the great columns of the nave drawing the eye and the heart high up to the vaulted ceilings, imposing on mere humans a humility of size, if of nothing else. Looking up, it is hard to imagine that much space being indoors. The building is so massive, and the space it encloses so voluminous, it could only be God’s house.

Looking down on Canterbury Cathedral from the campus of the University of Kent, one can see what an immense amount of space is carved out of the atmosphere and enclosed by it. Looking up at it from within, its cavernous form offers me a spiritual challenge. This great church was built by human hands, stone by stone, to enclose a huge space specifically for the sacred, a huge space carved out of the busy-ness of life, in which to be with God. All around it is room for industry, commerce, agriculture, transportation, and residence. But in it, in this largest of all Canterbury’s spaces, there is room only for being with God, and thus, with whatever and whoever is beloved of God. The challenge to which it points is, of course, the one to which Jesus consistently pointed, that of making a similar space in ourselves for being with God, and making it big enough that it will dominate our spiritual landscape. Such a complementary, internal space within us will, by God’s grace, be big enough both for God and for all whom God cherishes. Today I add another stone.

Lambeth Day 10 - 7/26/2008

Picture Day. After a full morning of discussing environmental sustainability and the moral leadership needed to effect it, this afternoon brought the festive challenge of herding more than 700 bishops and ecumenical guests into the 2008 Lambeth Conference’s official photograph. In the middle of a wide lawn had been constructed a huge bleacher, the sort used for fans at a sporting event, upon which we were stacked 12 rows high by the photographers for the formal shot. The stands were so high that a couple of bishops had to be led down to a lower level, having grown faint from acrophobia. The photo above, taken by Sue, shows only a portion of the crowd. If you click on it, you might be able to find me, close to the top and waving enthusiastically at the camera.

Bishops tend to clean up pretty well when there are cameras around, both in dress and attitude. I suppose that, like most people, we want to look good for posterity. In this Lambeth Conference’s photograph we all wore the dress of our order, the rochet and chimere. It is informative to note that at the last Lambeth Conference ten years ago, the first one attended by women bishops, all participants were asked to wear cassocks for the official photograph, a copy of which hangs in the hall outside the elevator near my office. The reason for this was that it avoided having women dress in episcopal (bishop’s) vestments. So in some ways, they still weren’t in the picture.

I am trying to picture the Church as I imagine God imagines it. Of course I can’t. I keep having to move back to get everyone in the field of view.

Lambeth Day 8 - 7/24/2008

Today we traveled early to London for a lunch at Lambeth Palace and then tea at Buckingham Palace with Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. Both were pretty impressive deals, and at the latter I briefly met the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip. The grounds and gardens of Buckingham Palace are beautiful. Very beautiful. Wandering around them, I was struck by one particularly lovely yellow rose called Gracious Queen. This evening I researched it on the Internet and found that it was bred in commemoration of Her Majesty’s Golden Jubilee. It is well named, Gracious Queen, as clearly she is.

As much as I enjoyed these events, the highpoint of the day came earlier, in the Walk of Witness for the Millennium Development Goals. Hundreds of purple cassocked bishops and their festively hatted spouses, along with numerous clergy and lay supporters, marched along Whitehall passed Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey and 10 Downing Street, across the Thames, and on to Lambeth Palace. Carrying placards that read Keep the Promise, Do Justice Love Kindness, and Halve Poverty by 2015, we were led by the Archbishop of Canterbury and other ecumenical and interfaith leaders in a living expression of encouragement to world leaders in making good their Millennium Year commitment to eradicate poverty by ceaselessly pursuing the United Nations’ eight Millennium Development Goals.

When we reached the Archbishop’s London residence and office, we were treated to an exceptionally powerful and inspiring speech by the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, which can be found at the following website:
http://www.twofourdigital.net/CabinetOffice/no10_statements/pm_speech2008_07_24.wmv.asx?title=Prime%20Minister's%20speech%20at%20the%20Lambeth%20Conference%20on%20the%20Millennium%20Development%20Goals&copyright=2008&author=www.twofour.co.uk
I encourage you to view it.

It felt so very good to suspend for a morning our listening and talking about important things on which we do not easily agree, and to take instead a public stand, with Anglican Christians from around the world, on important things about which all do agree. It was a beautiful morning for a walk. And I am particularly grateful that Archbishop Williams gave us the opportunity to follow through London the path that Micah laid out: to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God.

Lambeth Day 7 - 7/23/2008

Wednesday morning I awoke to two pieces of news in the British press that were of some concern. The first was a report that the Sudanese Archbishop had called for the Bishop of New Hampshire to resign. That act, in and of itself, was not novel. Numerous people have suggested the same over the last five years. What is disconcerting is that it came where and when it did, in the midst of a conference-wide effort to seek understanding before discerning (let alone demanding) specific actions or consequences.

The second report was that the Bishop of Fort Worth, Jack Iker, had publicly urged all Bishops of The Episcopal Church who are supportive of Bishop Robinson’s ministry as Bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire to withdraw from the Lambeth Conference and go home, reasoning that the conference had rejected Bishop Robinson and was therefore rejecting those who are sympathetic to him. To be invited by a colleague in our own House to leave this conference was a startling early-morning revelation. It served to wake me up sufficiently to realize also it was a beautiful, sunny day and that Sue, having arrived the day before, was in the room next door. (We are all housed in dormitories at the University of Kent in Canterbury.) Things were looking up.

By the time I had gone to the 7:15 Eucharist and had had some breakfast, I was focused less on the nature of these two requests and more on the timing of them, delivered right when the vast majority of participants were giving themselves to deeper understanding and companionship, rather than to volatile suggestions of where one another could go. I regretted that they came as such a distraction from the productive work being done, and I headed off to Bible Study and Indaba.

My Bible Study group discussed these disappointing pronouncements, and one member made a very constructive suggestion. He allowed as how it has been helpful to him in situations like this to pay attention to the feelings expressed rather than the words. Listen to the feelings, not the words, he proposed. Great advice for parents of teenagers, I thought. Listen to the feelings, not the words. I wondered if maybe that is what Jesus was doing, listening to the feelings not the words, while he drew in the sand as the Pharisees accused the woman caught in adultery, tossing up and down in their hands the stones of judgment they were waiting to throw. As we get further into the challenging topics before us, I will try to drop my own stones and do the same.

Lambeth Days 5 and 6 - 7/21&22/2008

Indaba is a Zulu word that refers to the practice of meeting to discuss an important concern, a practice in which all hear and are heard, and together listen for God. The goal is not simply to understand each other’s desires and convictions, but to comprehend the issue itself completely, through the perspectives of all. It is by that deep understanding of the issue or challenge that Indaba participants are prepared, by the spirit of holiness and one another, to find a way forward.

Monday we added to our daily schedule Indaba Groups. After the morning session of Bible Study, we come together with four other Bible Study groups into a larger body of some 40 bishops spanning continents, languages, cultures, and theologies, many of whose politics I can qualify by personal knowledge or reputation. In the Indaba Group we explore the responsibilities of episcopal leadership in our varied contexts, the complexities of provincial dynamics and polity, and the nature and challenges of the Communion. The format varies from day to day, as do the configurations of bishops since we often divide into groups of four to six for discussion, but always it involves serious reflection on the particular aspect of mission or ministry being addressed and coming up with a statement from each conversation that reflects the combined offering of the small group. Those learnings are then crafted by a “reporter” into a statement from the whole Indaba group that is in turn delivered, along with those from the other Indaba Groups, to a representative committee that makes of them a common report.

This is hard work. It is essential to hear each companion in this process with an open heart, making room in the conversation and in myself for both the truth being generously borne and its bearer. At the same time, it is important to discern thoughtfully what it is I have to offer. I find myself often wading through the urgent, the emotional, the reactive, and the sympathetic in search of the important, that experience, conviction, struggle, or perspective that will contribute most authentically from the Diocese of Ohio, from The Episcopal Church, and from me to make the whole more complete. When I look around the room at the forty-odd (or is it forty odd) souls in my Indaba Group, I cannot imagine anyone intentionally drawing these particular folks together to do much of anything. Yet when we speak, listen, and articulate our common and comprehensive learning, I clearly see that each participant is indeed an intentional gift. I confess that more than once I have looked around for the Exchange Department, but we are only two days into Indaba.

I am imagining that in Indaba the written product is only one part of the expected result. Perhaps more important may be the transformation of the participating community. I am wondering whether this process may be a model for a Communion whose covenant is simply, “I will stay in this conversation with you until we get beyond ourselves to that which God needs all of our eyes to see, all of our ears to hear, all of our hands to heal, and all of our hearts to love.”

Lambeth Day 4 - 7/20/2008

Lambeth Day 4

Sunday morning’s Eucharist at Canterbury Cathedral was a feast of pageantry and exceptionally good liturgy. All of the bishops processed two by two, vested mostly in rochet and chimere, making a colorful flow as we moved first up and then later back down the long center aisle of the nave to and from the Quire, as it is spelled. More impressive to me than the number and brightness of the long stream of colleagues was the feeling I had, seeing us so similarly clad, that we are all equal in the eyes and heart of God who welcomed us there. I was reminded of when I was a schoolboy in elementary school and we wore uniforms, not to stifle our individuality and uniqueness, but to make each equal, not distinguishable by earthly economies of class and wealth and social status. Likewise did we gather in that grand and ancient place of worship, equally loved by Christ, making equal claim to his Gospel, and equally accountable to serve the world in his name.

The sermon, preached by the Bishop of Colombo (Sri Lanka), the Rt. Rev. Duleep de Chickera, was profoundly moving. Bishop de Chickera, as much as any bishop here, serves in a diverse and violently conflicted context. In his diocese and country there are practiced Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity, against the backdrop of a fierce and decades old war. He has a gentle and strong spirit that meets you in a calm that is assuring and at the same time holds you accountable, in some ways like a caring grandparent who, without the slightest condescension, reminds you of your responsibility. His was a call to a stark self-examination, a willing surrender to unity-in-diversity, and a relentless and prophetic advocacy on behalf of others – for the Church to be, in Archbishop William Temple’s words, “the one institution that does not live for itself.” I urge you to read it in its entirety, which can be found at http://www.lambethconference.org/daily/news.cfm/2008/7/20/ACNS4438.

After Communion and in poignant juxtaposition to Bishop de Chickera’s word of gospel encouragement and accountability, we sang Marty Haugen’s inspiring hymn, Let us build a house where love can dwell and all can safely live, whose refrain pleads:
All are welcome,
all are welcome,
all are welcome in this place.
The irony of those words following the preacher’s was both painful and rightly challenging.

Later in the afternoon I attended, with some twenty colleagues including the Bishop of New Hampshire, an outdoor Eucharist offered by Changing Attitudes and Integrity, the Church of England and Episcopal Church organizations of support for GLBT Christians. As the weather alternated in its apparently typical English summer fashion back and forth between sunshine and light sprinkles, I felt brightened and further refreshed to be, for a second time that day, worshiping with encouraging companions whose love for the Church is genuine and generous.

While the Church struggles to welcome in a manner that fully embraces the identity and convictions of all God’s precious children, I am again made aware of how difficult true welcome is, the welcome Jesus extended to the Samaritan woman, the leper, the tax collector Zaccheus in his tree, and my own sinful self. For in welcoming others as Jesus welcomes us, in taking them into ourselves as he takes us into his holy self, we will be changed. To our deep fear of that change Jesus says only, “Fear not, for I am with you.” We ought to need nothing more.

Lambeth Day 2 - 7/18/08

Our second day of retreat at Canterbury Cathedral offered more space and time to be still with God and one another. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s continuing addresses on God’s Mission and a Bishop’s Discipleship are scholarly, insightful, and provocative, drawing us into a posture of openness and receptivity to each other and the Spirit. The quiet time is spent in reflection and prayer, and mostly in generous conversation with new acquaintances and old friends. It is a particular blessing to be again with Bishop Philip Baji, Diocese of Tanga, Tanzania, pictured here with me outside the Cathedral. We had a long walk together before Evening Prayer, recalling his time at our last diocesan convention which remains fresh in his heart, as it does in ours, and imagining what mission collaboration God may offer us in the future.

At the same time, I find myself missing those who by their own choice or by the host’s exclusion are absent from this community: bishops whom I know and whom I don’t know, with whom I agree and with whom I disagree, in whose presence I delight and in whose presence I struggle. Each of them makes me more whole when I am with them, and in their absence I am diminished.

The members of my Bible Study group, which meets every day for an hour and a quarter right after breakfast, have fast become intimate companions. The eight of us represent seven countries on four continents. Two of our group are here against the direction of their archbishops. After only two days together, we have achieved a level of honesty and candor that is reflective of their authenticity and humility, and a common desire to receive each other as God knows us to be.

The physical context for these first two days of community-building is striking and not easily ignored. The architecture and age of Canterbury Cathedral – its firm, encompassing physical presence and enduring history – speak a word of confidence in God and patience with humanity, respectively. This is an important note on which to start, I am persuaded, for while we have much hard work ahead of and among us, it is our surrender to God and our patient embrace of one another that will move us forward and render that labor productive.

The closing hymn at Evening Prayer, sung with the Cathedral Choir of men and boys, was John Ellerton’s text, The Day thou gavest, Lord, is ended…, set to St. Clement, Clement Scholefield’s beautiful and familiar tune. The final stanza seemed a fitting punctuation for the spiritual and communal journey of the day:

So be it, Lord; thy throne shall never
Like earth’s proud empires, pass away;
Thy kingdom stands, and grows for ever,
Till all thy creatures own thy sway.

My evening prayer this night is that, in the two weeks ahead, we creatures of God gathered at this conference will surrender, with confidence in God and patience with one another, to the divine intention that each and all may own God’s sway. So be it, Lord.

Lambeth Day 1 - 7/17/08

Canterbury, England
Lambeth Conference 2008

After the first full day of the Lambeth Conference, it is the juxtaposition of two quite powerful experiences that impresses me the most. One is that of the singing in worship, both under the twin-spired blue tent that houses our plenary gatherings, and in Canterbury Cathedral where we are spending the first two and a half days in retreat, led by Archbishop Rowan Williams. Whether we are singing African chant or Anglican hymnody, the sound is tonally rich and exquisitely beautiful, its harmonies filling the vast space above and around us, lingering long after each voice is silenced. This common voice, comprised of more than a thousand voices, is deep and pure and secure, a vivid audio image of the power and beauty of collaborative response to God.

The second experience is that of saying together the Lord’s Prayer, something we do a number of times each day, and each in our native tongue. It is prayed quietly and humbly, as if no one else is present, and while it is corporate prayer, it is profoundly individual. Obviously, there is no attempt to find a common pace, no impetus for any consciousness of where the person next to you is in recitation. While it, too, is the sum of its parts, it is anything but harmonious. The result is an extraordinary sound, a powerful and deep rumble that grows to a tangible strength and then fades into silence. After the first couple of times, I simply listened and allowed it to overwhelm me like the sound of a subway train passing underground somewhere very nearby. I could make out individual syllables of languages I could not possibly identify, all moving forward in their unique and independent ways, carrying meaning that is held between the petitioner alone and God. It is one of the most authentic utterances of humanity I have ever heard, leaving my prayer focused on God’s infinite ability to hear individually each of the beloved and to treasure who each genuinely is.

The juxtaposition of these two experiences presents a powerful metaphor for the Communion and what God is continually offering us therein. By God’s grace we can be at the same time both uniquely different and woven together into a powerful and beautiful song. In this way does God value and affirm each one of us, even as we may appear a living contradiction to another, and bring us together in a harmony not of our own making, to be the very body of Jesus.