The Most Rev. Carlos Touché Porter, Primate of Mexico : I was prepared for much worse. One thing I enjoy about being Anglican is to live with uncertainty and unresolved questions, and that is how we are going home. But if we are not of one mind, I think we are of one spirit.
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s final presidential address to the 2008 Lambeth Conference is now online.
The Reflections Document from the 2008 Lambeth Conference is now online. Here is the section on the Windsor Report and the three moratoria. I have
One can take heart in the fact that some of the most ardent homophobes in the Communion feel that they are losing ground, yet the fact remains that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglican Communion Office and the majority of the bishops at this conference want us to maintain our de facto ban on the consecration of partnered gay candidates to the episcopacy, and to ban either the authorization of rites of same sex blessings–it isn’t clear which.
The problem with miracles is that we tend to get mesmerized by them, focusing on God’s responsibility and forgetting our own. Miracles let us off the hook. They appeal to the part of us that is all too happy to let God feed the crowd, save the world, do it all. We do not have what it takes, after all.
Today, much talking about the talk, so to speak: How language challenges us. How we hear things, how we say things, and how to truly listen–and speak–when there’s so much noise. The Bishops are coming to the end of indabas and bible study with colleagues from around the world, and are feeling pangs of sadness at it being time to go, wonder at what has been accomplished (even if it hasn’t seemed like much to those outside).
Andrea Useem writes on Health.com’s Poked and Prodded blog about the condition known as runner’s high, and her own experience with it during her first marathon. The exultation she felt reminded her more of a religious experience than of any chemical rush, she says, and it piqued her interest enough to drill down into the phenomenon a bit more.
The Roanoke Times points out that even pastors sometimes have to just get away. They interviewed about two dozen local clergy members from various denominations and came away reporting just how difficult it is for many of them to take that time off. The Rev. Barkley Thompson of St. John’s Episcopal in Roanoke, Va., was one of those priests—trying to get out the door for his vacation even as he was being interviewed, Book of Common Prayer in hand as his family loaded up for the trip.
Update with reactions The penultimate draft of the Reflections paper from the Lambeth Conference is now available on the conference web site. Section K on
“I think what we’re running into is a kind of difficult rubbing between the indaba process which has been in large measure very conversational, very relational” and the work of the WCG, which is “seeking to find structures and procedures whereby we can remain in communion with one another,” said Archbishop Hiltz. “How the two can interface for the well-being is a huge challenge at this moment.”