Apparently it is 74°F outside. However, it is a steamy 81°F inside my house. The 8 MPH south breeze sporadically floats inside and offers a temporary reprieve of these desperate conditions. Despite this suffering, I will not break down to the air conditioner. I do not like living disconnected from the outside world. I like having my windows open and I sleep much better with the outside noise acting like a white noise.
However, I can only handle so much heat. I prefer outside temperatures between 50°F and 65°F. My ability to deal with the heat decreases after this point. At 85°F, I need relief in the form of air conditioning. Humidity compounds this problem and makes me cantankerous.Right now, I am in the upper limit of my tolerance. I am in a confused, contradictory state of being because I am dealing with almost hot conditions inside while knowing that it is better outside. All I can really do is complain here and desire the relief that comes in October and November.
Gimme a V! Gimme an O! Gimme an X! What's that spell? VOX!
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During the Lambeth Conference we are studying the Gospel of John in small groups. Particular attention is being paid to the “I Am” statements. Enormous attention has been paid to seven of these statements, each of which uses a metaphor to speak of Jesus, his ministry and his relationship to God and us. These are:
I am the vine
I am the living water
I am the gate
I am the bread of life
I am the good shepherd
I am the light of the world
A lifetime can be spent meditating on the I Am statements. The are each related to the appearance of God to Moses in the burning bush, a story itself filled with holy mystery. And each metaphor is theologically mysterious, capable of infinite meaning. Finally, they can be thought of in relation to each other, having been woven into one gospel, and relating all to the ministry of the Son.
But here in this Lambeth Conference I am drawn to other I Am statements of Jesus in the Gospel of John, lying outside and containing the metaphoric I Ams. In each of these less well known statements, Jesus puts no metaphor before you in order to help you understand him, but refers directly to himself.
One of these is in the conversation with the Samaratan woman at the well. Another is when Jesus meets his disciples in the midst of a storm on a lake at night, as he comes to them walking on water. At the end of John’s gospel, at night again, Jesus says to the ones who are inquiring where Jesus of Nazareth is in order to arrest him, “I Am he.”
The Lambeth Conference brings questions of identity forward in our lives. We are with people of many different ethnicities, cultures, and languages. In the presence of great diversity our easy assumptions of identity are unsettled, and deeper ways to ground our identity can emerge. We can begin to see our life in Christ as the ground of our being, our identity.
As we are drawn deeper and deeper into relationship with one another we find that the descriptors that may catch our attention at first, those associated with ethnicity and culture, rich and capable of being explored in depth as they are, do not begin to sum up human life. Gender, sexual orientation, economic status, all these are important too. And then we begin to learn the personal histories of people, certainly conditioned and connected to all the above, but articulated in unique ways having to do with the inner life of people, their gifts and aspirations.
At some point we may come to understand, as we perceive the deepest aspirations of another person, their courage and hopefulness in the face of their own life challenges, that we are seeing Christ in that person. Christ speaks I AM from within all life, if we have ears to hear and eyes to see.
What Jesus, when he speaks of himself without metaphoric mediation is about is affirming the goodness of creation and the apprehension of the depth of human beings within that creation. He reminds us that we are all “offspring of the divine,” and have the divine image planted within us.
The Lambeth Conference is reminding me of the life Baptism has drawn me into and prepares me for each day. I am trying to look for Christ in each person here.
PHOTOS COMPLIMENTS OF PILGRIM PHILIP TYLER!
I just watched the PBS' Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason where Moyers interviewed author Margaret Atwood. You can watch the entire interview here.
Atwood is a fascinating person with interesting beliefs on religion. I tend to agree with her on much of what she said during this interview. Atwood is also a fellow Canadian.
We have been on retreat with the Archbishop of Canterbury for the last three days. He spoke to the bishops in a series of five meditations on the meaning of the episcopacy. Some interesting things happened in my little life-world while I was moving through this retreat, walking back and forth from the University of Kent, where we are staying, and the cathedral where the retreat was held.
The receptionist at the college of the university where I’m staying gave me a large express mail package, and several letters. When I opened them in my room that evening I found dozens of cards with words of prayerful encouragement from cursillistas in the Diocese of California, and individual notes from clergy and lay people as well. Over these days I’ve been receiving numbers of email notes from people in the Diocese and elsewhere letting me know they are praying for me and all the bishops.
On one walk back from the cathedral I struck up a conversation with a man who was doing yardwork. He is a person who, in his profession, is doing work I think is highly valuable in helping us meet the environmental crisis, and who has a son who is in perhaps the most popular band in the world. Several times in the conversation he stressed that he hoped the conference would go well, and said he would be thinking about us throughout.
As I got to the top of the hill where the university is I came on a landscape crew building a beautiful stone and turf labyrinth, oriented towards the cathedral, which could be seen in the distance. The head of the work crew and I talked about how Lauren Artress had begun the labyrinth movement, which has spread over the world, at Grace Cathedral in the Diocese of California. I thought, as I looked at the labyrinth in the making, and the cathedral beyond it how ministries in so many parts of the world have effects not only in the community where they are born, but far beyond.
All of these events helped me think about the great network of Christians, Anglicans and others, who are connected to the bishops gathered here. It is hard for me to comprehend this kind of spiritual connectivity, encompassing some 70 million Anglicans, and many others beyond our Communion (our Communion bishops, like the Lutherans, and representatives of many other Christian bodies arrived at the conference yesterday).
As we bishops direct our prayerful energies to building relationships between us, the people we represent are being drawn into greater communion. Work in companion dioceses preceded this conference, and I imagine it will continue in new, surprising, enhanced ways afterwards. New friendships are being made, and new ways of relating, new structures to bear the relationships are being made as well.
I think that a new phase for the exercise of episcopé will be for bishops to seek to connect the people of God more directly with one another, rather than through us. This is analogous to what happens in a parish when it moves from being a pastoral to a program style congregation.
In the pastoral congregation, most lines of activity center on the rector. In the program church, committees, ad hoc work groups, groups of both being and doing form without direct involvement of the rector – the lines become multi-focal rather than mono-focal. I think we are at the point of looking to see how the same could be true in a global body like the Anglican Communion. This would be a new role for bishops, and evolution of the meaning of episcopé.
We have been on retreat with the Archbishop of Canterbury for the last three days. He spoke to the bishops in a series of five meditations on the meaning of the episcopacy. Some interesting things happened in my little life-world while I was moving through this retreat, walking back and forth from the University of Kent, where we are staying, and the cathedral where the retreat was held.
The receptionist at the college of the university where I’m staying gave me a large express mail package, and several letters. When I opened them in my room that evening I found dozens of cards with words of prayerful encouragement from cursillistas in the Diocese of California, and individual notes from clergy and lay people as well. Over these days I’ve been receiving numbers of email notes from people in the Diocese and elsewhere letting me know they are praying for me and all the bishops.
On one walk back from the cathedral I struck up a conversation with a man who was doing yardwork. He is a person who, in his profession, is doing work I think is highly valuable in helping us meet the environmental crisis, and who has a son who is in perhaps the most popular band in the world. Several times in the conversation he stressed that he hoped the conference would go well, and said he would be thinking about us throughout.
As I got to the top of the hill where the university is I came on a landscape crew building a beautiful stone and turf labyrinth, oriented towards the cathedral, which could be seen in the distance. The head of the work crew and I talked about how Lauren Artress had begun the labyrinth movement, which has spread over the world, at Grace Cathedral in the Diocese of California. I thought, as I looked at the labyrinth in the making, and the cathedral beyond it how ministries in so many parts of the world have effects not only in the community where they are born, but far beyond.
All of these events helped me think about the great network of Christians, Anglicans and others, who are connected to the bishops gathered here. It is hard for me to comprehend this kind of spiritual connectivity, encompassing some 70 million Anglicans, and many others beyond our Communion (our Communion bishops, like the Lutherans, and representatives of many other Christian bodies arrived at the conference yesterday).
As we bishops direct our prayerful energies to building relationships between us, the people we represent are being drawn into greater communion. Work in companion dioceses preceded this conference, and I imagine it will continue in new, surprising, enhanced ways afterwards. New friendships are being made, and new ways of relating, new structures to bear the relationships are being made as well.
I think that a new phase for the exercise of episcopé will be for bishops to seek to connect the people of God more directly with one another, rather than through us. This is analogous to what happens in a parish when it moves from being a pastoral to a program style congregation.
In the pastoral congregation, most lines of activity center on the rector. In the program church, committees, ad hoc work groups, groups of both being and doing form without direct involvement of the rector – the lines become multi-focal rather than mono-focal. I think we are at the point of looking to see how the same could be true in a global body like the Anglican Communion. This would be a new role for bishops, and evolution of the meaning of episcopé.
A today's shopping spree at Half Price Books yielded four more books I need to read before I die: #28-Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore, #837-Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, #54-Zadie Smith's White Teeth, and #387-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward. I do love the Russians (espeically the dead ones) and their literary works.
What's the closest thing you have to a time machine?
Submitted by Verisimilitude.
If I desire to go back in time, all I have to do is retreat into my memory. I remember most everything that I see, read, or hear.