Annabella Santos-Wisniewski stood on her favorite Boracay Island beach in her native Philippines and had a vision. Looking behind her into a forest of palm trees, she said, “I see something white like a jewel sparkling at night. It connects inside and out to the environment such that nature is inseparable from the whole.”
When we call God ‘Father’, we are called to step out, as apprentice children, into a world of pain and darkness. We will find that darkness all around us; it will terrify us, precisely because it will remind us of the darkness inside our own selves. The temptation then is to switch off the news, to shut out the pain of the world, to create a painless world for ourselves.
Bonnie Anderson, the President of the House of Deputies (a body of the General Convention), has issued a statement today after a long consultation with
Bishop Christopher Epting is the chief ecumenical officer of the Episcopal Church. In a recent post on his blog, he talks about how the recent actions of the Episcopal Church’s General Convention have effected the conversations the denomination has with other denominations and draws a lesson about the need for Anglicans to gather next year in Lambeth.
San Joaquin, one of the dioceses associated with the theologically conservative Network within the Episcopal Church, is meeting in annual convention this weekend. One of the orders of business it has will be to consider taking the final actions that could attempt to take itself of the Episcopal Church and join it with another Anglican Province.
For years I have thought about rifling through old sermon files to see whether there is a book lurking there somewhere. I suppose that publishing a book of sermons is every priest’s fantasy, after preaching week in and week out year after year. Surely there must be something valuable and permanent to make up for all that Saturday night angst and sweat.
To Thee, O Fountain of mercy, my mother poured out still more frequent prayers and tears that thou wouldst hasten thy aid and enlighten my darkness, and she hurried all the more zealously to the church and hung upon the words of Ambrose [of Milan], praying for “the fountain of water that springs up into everlasting life” [Jn 4:14].
Even at the very beginning of the 20th Century sermons were often reported in newspapers like “The Times” in extraordinary detail. Soon however the gatekeepers who controlled the new popular press decided that the mass market did not want to be treated to dense reasoning, copious quotations and a Niagara of dependent clauses and qualifications. In consequence, we have all had to learn to some extent or another to be ecclesiastical Ernest Hemingways.
Recent advances in AIDS treatments have lowered concerns about the disease, and AIDS education efforts, whether they emphasized abstinence or condom use, have flagged. Perhaps as a result, teenage sex rates have risen since 2001 and condom use has dropped since 2003. Abortion rates have held steady for a decade, although numbers from 2005 and 2006 are not available.
To believe in an absolute religious truth is to believe that the object of my belief is not vulnerable to the contingencies of human history: God’s mind and character cannot be changed by what happens here in the world. God does not fail because I fail to persuade others or because my community fails to win some kind of power. In plain English, religious violence suggests religious insecurity.