Parishes in the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh have received a very strange letter from former Bishop Robert Duncan’s chancellor, Robert G. Devlin. Lionel Deimel advises them to ignore it.
The annual diocesan convention includes election of Standing Committee and Executive Council members, approval of the budget and resolutions. Among the eleven resolutions submitted in advance of convention are a resolution on conduct of clergy and a resolution calling for the creation of an equality commission. The business portion of convention is scheduled for October 25.
What she didn’t tell worshippers gathered at the Wasilla Assembly of God church in her hometown was that her appearance that day came courtesy of Alaskan taxpayers, who picked up the $639.50 tab for her airplane tickets and per diem fees.
One of the best ways people can be the church together in a money-dominated age is to break the taboo against discussing money and money worries. If we are concerned with having enough money to care for others or ourselves, or with meeting payments, let’s confess those concerns to our brothers and sisters in a supportive setting. A burden confessed is a burden shared.
“Economic” thinking ignores our environment, and is clumsy in computing intangibles such as social order, feelings, religious values, and beauty. It disorients and dislocates culture, hypothesizing an economic man—a consumer and producer—who is unrecognizable to those of us who encounter the daily irrationality that makes up human behavior. Reprinted with permission of Anglican Theological Review.
I am lying on my back. Maybe I am in a crib or a baby carriage, but I am not on someone’s lap. I am alone but I am not lonely. My eyes are following the yellow-green sparkles of light through a hazy screen. My arms are free and my hands reach to touch what my eyes can see and my heart can feel. I feel breath in me and in the trees and gently whirling between us.
I can respond to all the myriad small demands each day presents only if I never stop moving. I can hold chaos at bay only by breaking each moment into as many pieces as possible, hoping almost desperately that there will be enough to go around, that I can spread myself thin enough to cover it all.
“Has Rowan Williams actually been to a service in an Episcopal church since he became Archbishop?” a friend asked me recently. Perhaps he has, but I could not think of an occasion.
In a letter mailed last week to national and local church leaders, Bishop Geralyn Wolf of Rhode Island, who has disciplinary authority over the Seattle priest, said a church committee had determined that the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding “abandoned the Communion of the Episcopal Church by formal admission into a religious body not in communion with the Episcopal Church.”