Wednesday evening

Kansas is not flat. Heading east today, it was hills and headwinds. Isaac and I took our five-hour shift beginning at one in the afternoon, alternating hour-long rides and ending up breaking out the tandem for the last hour. It was our maiden voyage cycling as a pair, and although we were both tired from fighting Euros (not the currency, the Greek god of the east wind), we met his challenges to our timing and patience with a shared spirit of adventure and good humor. The most difficult test to our resolve came from the tandem’s seats, which are very different from what is on either of our regular bikes. Every long incline led not to a descent, as had been our experience in the mountains, but to another incline. Each crest in the distance offered a false promise of a cooling run down its back side, as the seats issued their assault on our backsides. But perseverance was ours, and we made the hand-off to Steve and Kelly.

The evening’s entertainment came in Nickerson, Kansas where we stopped to re-fuel the mother ship, our 30 foot home on wheels which we rented from El Monte RV, near Anaheim. Outside the KwikShop 24-hour gas and convenience store, two SUVs backed out of their parking spaces and into the same small piece of God’s creation. This drew a small crowd including, shortly, Nickerson’s finest, who photographed the damage and made a thorough accident report, taking time to direct us to a vacant lot suitable for docking our MS.

We are passing through Everytown, USA, day after day and night after night. Just like everywhere else, the people bump their cars into each other’s, come out to witness and bless life’s events no matter how mundane, and take the time to help the odd stranger in Spandex cycling shorts park his episcopal land yacht. It is a privilege to encounter all these folk whom God so loves.

Wednesday at noon

We climbed through the Rockies all Monday night, with Carl conquering Monarch Pass (elevation 11,840) at noon on Tuesday. Coming out of the east slope of the great mountains, I enjoyed a stretch of cycling along the Arkansas River, before turning up into our last bit of incline. There was a moderate headwind, enough to force you to work even on a downward grade. As I doggedly pushed onward against the persistent pushing back of the wind, I was reminded of the countless times I have pushed on against the steady resistance of the Holy Spirit, too strong willed or dimwitted to heed her persistent push.

Now 75 miles into Kansas, we are enjoying 85-90 degree sunny weather. While we will doubtless have plenty of headwinds in the days to come, I feel confident that we have the Spirit of Holiness encouraging us along.

Cycling from General Convention

I and the Ohio cycling team are heading east. We got a good start out of California, getting used to night riding and testing out what rotations might work best in what terrain. It already seems a rich metaphor for our life in the Church. By noon yesterday we hit extremely high temperatures in Nevada. The outside temperature gage on my Prius (the follow vehicle) registered steadily at 118 degrees Fahrenheit. A resident of Overton claimed 120. I don’t think it was an act of pride. I got a flat tire from two tiny steel wires from a truck tire blowout. In removing the wheel for repair, the tire rubber was so hot it burned my fingers. Even the handle bar tape was painful when I moved the position of my hands. At 2:30 in the afternoon we took a break as the heat had become dangerous. Regardless of how much fluid we drank, we couldn’t keep our body temperatures down while riding. It will be better when we get to higher elevations today.

The General Convention completed all of its legislative action an hour ahead of schedule on Friday afternoon, in notable comparison to 2006 and many previous conventions which left business unfinished. While the media is describing our Church’s deliberations as focused on two things, money and sex, I believe the 76th General Convention of The Episcopal Church was principally about honesty: honesty about who we are as a community of Christians, complex in our makeup and unified in God’s mission; honesty about bringing who we truly are into our continuing relationship with one another and the rest of the Anglican Communion; and honesty about our resources and how they are directing us to reform this Church.

This ride is a stretch. It is a stretch physically, calling us, riders and support crew alike, to know our limits and to live within them. It is a stretch for us relationally, eleven adventurous souls, none of whom knew everyone when we started, living in very close quarters and trying to accomplish together a great challenge that will require the best of each of us. It is a stretch for us as an act of mission as it opens our hearts to those on behalf of whom we are riding and inspires us to give more generously of ourselves. And it is a stretch for us spiritually as we are continuously awed by the creation through which we are pedaling and given the contemplative time that distance cycling provides for listening to God.

Being the Body of Christ is likewise a stretch. It, too, calls us to live honestly, to be genuine in who we are and to live within the limits of what God knows us to be. It calls us to meet the challenges of living in relationship with others, both friends and strangers, letting God change us through them. It calls us to mission on behalf of those whose suffering will make us more whole, if we allow ourselves to take it in and take it on. And it calls us to a spirituality that is as disciplined as pedaling a bicycle and as adventurous as the God-given life through which we are all riding together.

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.