Author: Jim Naughton

An exchange of missionaries

How do we get to know each other better, so that we can understand each other better? One answer is to go live and move and have our being with each other. To send people from each side to serve as representatives of their churches in those areas of the world where the disagreement is strongest. In other words, to send missionaries forth, not just from the Global North to the Global South, but from the Global South to the Global North as well.

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Another parable of the sower

Once upon a time a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came along and devoured them. So he put his seed pouch down and spent the next hour or so stringing aluminum foil all around his field. He put up a fake owl he ordered from a garden catalog and, as an afterthought, he hung a couple of traps for the Japanese beetles.

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Live: The sermon, the press, the protester, etc.

The Bishop of New Hampshire’s day ended with Chinese food and chocolate ice cream. He sat with some 15 friends in a second floor conference room in St. Mary’s Church in Putney, talking about nothing in particular, as though he had passed a normal day, with another on the horizon.

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Live from Lambeth: Up and not quite running

All right, enough of the travelogue I suppose. I go back to the church in a few hours to begin a day of media wrangling. Gene is doing about 14 brief interviews between noon and when he preaches at the 6:30 p. m. Eucharist at Giles’ church. Five of them are television interviews and two or three of those are live, so it could get rather hectic.

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Different kinds of ground

I remember seeing this parable [of the sower] acted out in the stage production of “Godspell,” a good-humored play based on the gospel according to Matthew. . . . Watching all of that, I had the same response I always do to this parable: I started worrying about what kind of ground I was on with God.

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Playfishness

My summer begins in early June when the dolphins are back playing in the ocean off Cape Henlopen, knowing better how to play than any human being I ever met. Webster’s Dictionary defines play as moving lightly; “to frisk; to flutter; as, sunlight plays on the waves; to have fun; to engage in recreation.” To my mind, dolphins are the embodiment of playfulness.

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Essential commitments

We are frequently told that we live in an age that doubts the wisdom, perhaps even the possibility, of commitment. At the same time, we can see a profound yearning for the values of community in the society of our times: the stability and sense of identity, the rootedness, that is so often lacking for those who live in the modern city.

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Blogging bishops and other Lambeth resources

The internet will be buzzing with blogging bishops, some with flip phones for videoblogging, during the Lambeth Conference. Here is your one-stop shopping for blogs by bishops and others who will be involved in the Fringe events or reporting on the every 10 year event.

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