Thought we’d kick off the summer here at the Cafe with this piece, even though the season technically turned over at 7:59 pm EDT last night: Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori is visiting Eagle Butte, S.D., for the Niobrara Convocation this weekend. From a story in the Rapid City Journal:
About 3,000 Native American Episcopalians and others are expected to greet Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, on her first trip to a South Dakota reservation. They will come from St. Julia’s Church at Porcupine; from St. James at Enemy Swim Lake; from the Church of the Epiphany at Wolf Creek and from Holy Innocents Church in Parmelee.
“My primary purpose is to be with the people, to listen to their experience and to learn about this diocese,” Jefferts Schori said after arriving at the Pierre airport Thursday. She’ll be on the Cheyenne Eagle Butte Reservation through Sunday, where she’ll preach at the closing Eucharist. “I’m still working on it,” the bishop said of her Sunday sermon. “I’m going to do a lot of listening in the next few days so that what I say is relevant.”
The Niobrara Convocation is an annual summer gathering of Lakota and Dakota Episcopalians that dates back to 1870, when the Episcopal denomination played a leading role in christianizing the territory’s tribal reservations.
A notable quote from the Presiding Bishop (which I copyedited slightly since it wasn’t a sic):
“It’s a time of ferment, which can be enormously positive,” Jefferts Schori said. “You look at a vat of beer and sometimes it doesn’t smell very good – but there’s a lot of good work going on there, and the product smells better than the process. Something like that’s going on in the Anglican Communion.”
Read the whole thing here.