House of Bishops 2015 Spring Meeting, Day Three

This being the Lord's Day, with the intention of "sabbath" built into the schedule, there is less to report. The Eucharist was at 10am, with John Tarrant, the Bishop of South Dakota, presiding. Once again, the Theodicy Jazz Collective led the music with great energy, skill, and sensitivity--they are really good--though I still remain unpersuaded that jazz as a genre plays well with eucharistic liturgy. Now, I don't want to sound whiny, but I can't not mention the level to which I was upset by the liturgy itself--ostensibly Rite II from the Prayer Book, but with the text generously emended to exclude masculine pronouns for God, which is the ideological hobgoblin of today's liturgical elite. I can usually take this somewhat in stride on such occasions--ideologues gonna be ideologues--but I had my own little meltdown when we sang Thomas Ken's Psalm paraphrase, the concluding verse of which is the ubiquitous 'Doxology,' and the text of that verse was altered to exclude "him" in the first three lines, and render the Holy Trinity as "Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit" in the last one. I can tolerate a little ideology, but heresy is a tougher pill to swallow, and any evocation of the Trinity that eschews "Father" and "Son" is most likely just that--heresy. I will probably absent myself from the Eucharist tomorrow and Tuesday. It's just not a spiritually safe place for me.

We were then addressed, while still in the chapel, by David Bailey, bishop of the Navajoland Area Mission. His assigned theme was "economics and class," but, as one might imagine, he chose to explore that territory through the lens of his experience with the Navajo people. Bottom line: In addition to upper, upper middle, middle, and lower, there is another class--invisible. And the descendants of native peoples in this land are generally invisible to the rest of us. The invading European-Americans treated them, in a word, shamefully, and largely as a result of that shameful treatment, native populations today suffer from a long list of social ills that is just plain depressing. Sobered by the picture Bishop Bailey painted, we repaired to our table groups to process our experience of and involvement in unjust social structures. My own opinion is that this subject is exponentially more complex and contradictory than most who are reflexively energized by issues of social justice are usually willing to acknowledge.

That brought us to lunch, after which we were free until dinner. I used the time for a nap, a long walk around the lake on a beautiful day, and to catch up on some reading. After dinner, we had a standard element in meetings of the House--a "fireside chat." We actually did meet in a room with a fireplace, but I don't really noticing an actual fire. This is a closed, of-the-record meeting, moderated by the Presiding Bishop, about which we are covenanted not to say anything. So I won't.