2017 Fall House of Bishops, Day 6

No dramatic or particularly compelling photo ops today. What you're looking at here is a fuzzy shot of the Rev. Robert Williams of the United Methodist Church, who flew all the way out from Philadelphia to advocate for the emerging full-communion agreement between the UMC and the Episcopal Church. This matter won't come before General Convention until 2021, but its proponents are doing all they can to get it on everyone's radar.

I'm of a double mind on this. I have a deep personal commitment to ecumenism. Reconciliation and unity are of the essence of the gospel. The way the proposal is being framed is that we are being asked to recognize one another as churches, and hence, one another's members and ministries. There is no assertion that we are to agree on every point of faith and practice. That said, I stumble over the Methodists' use of grape juice rather than wine in the Eucharist. That may seem like a picayunish detail, but it's not, particularly in view of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral's articulation of the use of "the elements ordained by [Christ]" when it lays out the benchmarks for Anglican ecumenical discussions.

But there's more. Liberals in TEC are queasy about the proposal because the UMC still officially holds to an orthodox understanding of sexuality and marriage. However, the only reason this is so is because the UMC includes within its ranks large numbers of Methodists in various African countries, who tend to hold traditional views. There is a big showdown scheduled for 2019, and it is anybody's guess what will happen. If the UMC remains intact as is, it will likely continue down the road of orthodoxy and therefore become unappealing to mainstream Episcopalians. If they split, opposition from the left will dissolve. The fat lady has not yet even begun to sing in all of this.

So, what else did we do today? We had a business meeting--an official session, with Roberts' Rules and all that goes with it. The most time-and-energy-consuming part of this meeting was the passage of a "word to the church" on issues of stewardship of the environment, with cognate intersections with racism and other issues of social justice. I don't have access to the "perfected" text just yet, but I'm sure it will be out in cyberspace shortly. I didn't vote against it, but I didn't vote for it either, so I guess that's an abstention. There's nothing glaringly egregious about it, but I think it's theologically weak and is riddled with imprecise language that weakens its impact. I didn't join the plenary wordsmithing discussion, mostly for reasons of keeping my powder dry for other battles. But I am concerned about a pattern of using language like "people of God" and "family of God" to seemingly refer to all people generally, rather than specifically to those who are "in Christ," the community of the baptized. This both flows from and abets sloppy thinking and sloppy biblical exegesis.

Everything else was pretty pro forma. We had the afternoon off, which I used to keep on top of the never-ending stream of emails. We gathered again for a closing banquet, and we're officially finished now. I write at mid-evening local time. Many of us are on a flight that is set to depart at 1:20am, so it's going to be a long night and a long day. Brenda and I have a substantial layover in Seattle and a just-plain-long one in Dallas. It will be bedtime Wednesday by the time we get home.

2017 Fall House of Bishops, Day 5

Every day during this week-long event, aware that I'm going to be blogging in the evening, I'm scouting about looking for a "cover photo" for my post, something that will best encapsulate the significance of the day.

So this is what I've got. It was hanging on the wall of Soapy Smith's, a downtown Fairbanks eatery where Brenda and I had dinner with three other couples from the Class of 2011--a calendar from 1910 promoting a restaurant in the Yukon Territory of Canada. Don't look for any hidden or subtle symbolism in the image, because there isn't any. It's pretty much a cipher, kind of like what went on in the official activities of the House of Bishops today--with one exception, which I will get to in due course.

In both our morning and afternoon sessions, we were asked to spend most of our time in table groups "unpacking" the experiences of the last couple of days--the drop-in visits to native villages on Saturday, and yesterday's potlatch in Nenana. We were supposed to focus on themes of racism and environmental justice. To be blunt, it was too little to do and do much time in which to do it. The afternoon session was noticeably depleted attendance-wise; I myself slipped away to process a mountain of email when I literally found myself alone at my table.

I don't mean to sound cynical (well, maybe a little). I was deeply moved by our experiences, particularly the visit to Ft Yukon on Saturday. It was worth a bit of peer group reflection. Maybe an hour's worth. But not the bulk of an entire day.

At 5:00, following the Eucharist, spouses and other observers were dismissed from the meeting room while the bishops had our customary "fireside chat" with the Presiding Bishop. This is an opportunity to be candid, speak in an "executive session" environment, and deal with sensitive issues. As it turned out, there was nothing brought up that needed sensitive treatment, It could all have easily been done in open session.

In the remarks that follow, I have the permission of those whom I mention or quote.
At one point, a bishop asked the Presiding Bishop if he had any comment on the latest statistics that track the continuing precipitous numerical decline in the Episcopal Church. This question evoked an extended and rather passionate response from Bishop Curry. I wish I had a transcript or a recording, because I would like to be more precise in how I characterize his remarks. But they were along the lines of, "If we concentrate on what we're supposed to be doing, making and forming disciples of Jesus Christ, people who know the Lord and follow him and live the way Jesus call his people to live, we won't have time to even worry about Average Sunday Attendance. That will all take care of itself. If we continue to navel-gaze, then we won't survive, and probably shouldn't survive." It was a clarion call to keep first things first, and focus on the work of gospel proclaiming and evangelization.

On the heels of this, the Bishop of Albany rose and wondered aloud whether there might be a way, at the next General Convention, to consider no resolutions save for those pertaining to the DFMS budget and necessary elections, devoting the rest of our time in Austin to workshops and seminars on how to fulfill the vision that had just been articulated so compellingly by the Presiding Bishop. Of course, there is no constitutional or canonical way to do that, and I suspect Bishop Love knew as much. But I know I'm not the only one who found it an arrestingly attractive notion. What a concept.

2017 Fall House of Bishops, Day 4

This being the Lord's Day, the morning was dedicated to worship. The visiting bishops and spouses were divided between (read: crammed into) three churches in the greater Fairbanks area. I was part of the group that attended St Matthew's, which was walking distance from the hotel, and which observed its patronal feast day today. The Presiding Bishop preached and the Bishop of Alaska celebrated. We were welcomed with over-the-top hospitality, and the entire occasion was altogether lively.

Shortly thereafter, we boarded buses and rode south and west on the highway toward Anchorage for about an hour, ending up at the village of Nenana, one of the 42 native villages in the interior of Alaska, and among those in which the Episcopal Church has been the major ecclesial presence and influence. There we were treated to a traditional potlatch, as the guests of honor. Feeding a couple of hundred guests in a room (the tribal hall) not designed to accommodate nearly that many was a feat of true logistical legerdemain. We were asked to remain seated--just in chairs, not at tables--while the young people of the community served a multi-course meal, the centerpiece of which was roast moose. (We were told that three animals were harvested for this occasion.) There were speeches galore by all sorts of tribal and ecclesiastical dignitaries, and lots of traditional singing and dancing, to the compelling beat of drums.

We got back to the hotel around 6:45. I gathered for light supper (most of us were still full from the potlatch) with seven other Communion Partner bishops and three spouses (there are more of us, but many aren't here). We have strategizing to do as the next General Convention looms on the horizon, and another House of Bishops in between, and a potentially shattering proposal to surgically amend the Prayer Book and catechism just with respect to marriage already formally in the pipeline.

2017 Fall House of Bishops, Day 3

Here's the lovely Lady Brenda, along with Alaska's own Bishop Mark Lattime, boarding our principal mode of transportation today. It took us, along with the Presiding Bishop and his right-hand man Canon Michael Hunn, the Bishop of Wyoming and his wife, and the Bishop of Vermont and his wife, to the village of Fort Yukon, a little more than an hour north from Fairbanks by air (and well inside the Arctic Circle). This was but one piece of a large "apostolic progression" of bishops into several communities in the interior of Alaska. (Bishop Lattime, by the way, travels this way all the time; most of the places he visits can't be driven to.)

A word about the history of Christianity in Alaska is in order. The gospel was first brought to this part of the world by Russian Orthodox missionaries in the eighteenth century. But they tended to concentrate on the coastal areas and not pay much attention to the interior. It was other mainline churches--generally Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, and Anglican--that were hugely successful in evangelizing the native peoples of the interior in the nineteenth century. But since, in that era, churches were expected to take responsibility for hospitals and schools, the churches prudently decided not to compete with one another, and divvied up the territory. The sprawling plain known as the Yukon Flats became an Episcopalian enclave.

So visiting one of these villages is akin to visiting an English village 75 or 100 years ago. Separation of church and state is not one of their core values. We were greeted at the airstrip by the mayor, the village chief, and the parish priest. They bussed us directly to the village church, St Stephen's, which

was established more than a century ago by the legendary evangelist of the Yukon, Archdeacon Hudson Stuck. We entered the building to the strains of a string band of children and youth--fiddles and guitars--leading congregational singing. It was magical.

Because this  village shares a priest with another, they can't celebrate the Eucharist as often as they'd like, so it wasn't too difficult for them to prevail on Bishop Lattime and Presiding Bishop Curry to lead a somewhat impromptu celebration--again with the fiddles and guitars and a venerable reed organ leading the way. Bishop Curry did what Bishop Curry does by way of a sermon, which means that there were no dull moments.

We were then whisked off to the Tribal Hall, where we were given seats of honor and feted with moose soup, local king salmon from the Yukon River, and sundry side items. It was a feast. With the chief presiding, we were addressed by the mayor, the police chief, the parish priest, and all the members of the tribal council. Two things stood out for me: their sincere and abiding faith in Christ, and the oppressive weight of alcoholism, an epidemic of teen suicide, an anxiety over the prospect of environmental change making it ever more difficult to continue with their centuries-old way of life, which is organically bound up with the cycle of seasonal change, fish spawning, and caribou migration. Then there was more music, this time accompanied by some folk dancing, which they even persuaded YFNB to participate in. (Sorry, no pictures or video.)

We then, literally, went down to the river to pray On the bank of the Yukon, we offered a brief liturgy-of-the-word with the theme of stewardship of creation and blessing of the land. Many commented that they have never seen the water level so low, which only heightens their anxiety. (At that moment it felt to me like we were visiting December in September--it was about 40F, breezy, and overcast. Fortunately, we had been warned to layer up.)

On our way back to the airstrip, we stopped twice: once to visit and offer prayers at the grave of Archdeacon Stuck, and then to bless a newly-constructed morgue building. This may seem a little odd, but burying a body in the midst of a long and frigid Yukon winter is no mean feat. The morgue, which is next to the church, is the place where the casket is constructed, and the body prepared for burial, and preserved (a natural cold storage) while the grave is dug, which is a lengthy and laborious process.

We were back on our single engine overwing aircraft around 4:00, and safely at our hotel 90 minutes later. It was rather an amazing day. Within this calendar year, I have visited Anglican Christian communities in Peru, Tanzania, and now the Arctic interior of Alaska. While there are huge differences between the three places, I find myself tracking a thread of commonalities among these "developing world" contexts. There is much to ponder.

2017 Fall House of Bishops, Day 2

This is a view of the Chena River, the banks of which were once deemed "fair" by the explorer who first steamed up it. I snapped it while on a lunchtime pedestrian excursion with the Bishop of Tennessee. For some inexplicable reason, downtown Fairbanks is swarming with Thai restaurants. I made the mistake of cockily asking the server to make sure mine was spicy. My head hasn't stopped sweating yet. (The weather today was around 50F and drizzly. It feels like November in September.)

The morning consisted of more presentations by members of various indigenous peoples. A 96-year old tribal elder singing "I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill" in her native Athabascan language brought the house down. It was impressed upon us how much the ancient peoples of this land rely on a finely-honed eons-old pattern of relationship with nature revolving around the cycle of seasonal change. It's not only their cultural heritage; it's their food supply and their social fabric. There is great anxiety over the effect that proposed oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would have on this delicate ecological balancing act.

The afternoon session was devoted mostly to preparing us for our various excursions to remote villages tomorrow, include a crash tutorial on videography and video editing on a smart phone. They're encouraging us to shoot lots of video and send clips to the communications wonks in New York, which they can harvest and edit toward the compilation of a collective video narrative.

This was the evening for "class" dinners (I'm in the Class of 2011, which is made up of all bishops who were elected in 2010, no matter whether they were consecrated that year or the following one.) As a class, we bonded extraordinarily well from the get-go, and very much enjoy one another's company.

2017 Fall House of Bishops, Day 1

This is the actual airplane flown by the third Bishop of Alaska, the legendary "flying bishop" Bill Gordon, who was elected in 1948 at the age of 29 and served until his retirement in 1974. The aircraft is on display at the Morris Thompson Cultural Center, a museum in downtown Fairbanks about a dozen blocks from the hotel where the House of Bishops is meeting through next Tuesday. Most of the bishops and spouses made a stop there as part of their afternoon activities. I found it an intensely interesting place.

Our day began with Morning Prayer at our tables in the main meeting room. We were then welcomed by Bishop of Alaska Mark Lattime, who, in turn, introduced two gentlemen from the indigenous peoples of the area, who addressed us at some length. I was particularly impressed by the first one, who maintains a profound sense of connection with the people who have inhabited this land for 10,000 years alongside an uncommonly rich, articulate, and well-formed Christian faith. He had some insights into the story of Melchizedek in Genesis that I had never heard before.

After a break, and the usual "check in" time with our table groups, we heard from Bishop of Central Florida Greg Brewer, speaking on behalf of the Task Force for Communion Across Differences. How can we as a House do a better job of making sure we hear--and actively listen to--all the voices in the room, including those which, for one reason or another, may be soft or silent? Bishop Brewer was speaking particularly of those who represent what has become a minority position on issues of sexuality and marriage, but which has been long held in our church and continues to be mainstream in global Anglicanism. Personally, I found his remarks to be the highlight of my nearly seven years in the House of Bishops. He spoke truth that has desperately needed to be spoken, but which has been either so unwelcome or so inaudible that it has been accorded no venue. I felt light a huge weight was beginning to be lifted.

We continued with discussion at our tables around these questions. As we face a General Convention next year at which there will be a proposal for a surgical revision of the Prayer Book that would articulate an understanding of marriage for which maleness and femaleness are irrelevant, it is essential that the bishops arrive in Austin already having had deep and prolonged listening to one another about the issues in general and the proposal in particular. Our first public conversation about it should not be when we are debating a question that is about to be resolved by means of a vote. In fact, it might behoove us--and I felt some energy in this direction--for us to think of ways of making decisions that do not involve voting of the sort that creates winners and losers. It is, of course, a huge challenge for democratically-conditioned Americans to even conceive of such a thing.

We got back together late in the afternoon for Eucharist in celebration of St Matthew's Day. The Presiding Bishop served as celebrant, and Todd Ousley, lately Bishop of Eastern Michigan and now the Bishop for Pastoral Development, a member of the Presiding Bishop's staff, preached. We then adjourned for a cocktail hour and returned to the same room and table for a banquet-style dinner.

2017 Spring House of Bishops, Day 5

The Spirit blows where the Spirit blows. Some sort of spirit certainly blew here today. Whether it was the Holy Spirit of God or something else is unclear to me without first getting some distance. (Isn't that how the Holy Spirit tends to work? Discernible clearly only in hindsight?)

We began with another table discussion of generous length (about 30 minutes, as I recall). Each table was given a sheet amalgamating all the feedback that had been turned in on sticky notes yesterday concerning how we think we're meeting the personal and institutional challenges of dealing with the way we tend to systematically marginalize individuals and groups based on criteria over which they have no control ("Who I am" rather than "What I do").

This went well enough, and then the plenary floor was open to sharing from the table discussions. All was going according to plan. Then one bishop (whom I will not name, though he probably wouldn't mind) got up and said, in effect, "There's an elephant in the room, and we're ignoring it in favor of a bunch of navel gazing." That's when everything went off the rails. A handful of others got up and said, "Yeah. There's an elephant in the room, and we need to talk about it!" Except ... nobody actually named the elephant. And I was getting the feeling that those who were giving their Amens to the original comment were all talking about different elephants, but I didn't know for sure. Was I the only one who was clueless? So I went to the microphone myself and said, "We have a set of Core Values in this House, one of which is to speak directly. But here I am listening to a bunch of us saying that there's something we desperately need to talk about, and I have no idea what it is."

After a few more speakers, we took a break while the Presiding Bishop, the members of the Planning Committee, and the chaplains all hung heads together to figure what to do. During the break, several bishops greeted me enthusiastically and thanked me for saying what I did, because they were equally clueless. It felt good not be alone in my ignorance.

Then the bishop who had made the comment that got the whole ruckus started came up to me and clarified what he meant. It was all about the Bishop of Washington's sermon on Sunday, and her remark about the number of her own parishes that are slowly (or not so slowly) withering away, without even a spark of the sort of vitality that would be attractive to those seeking a deeper spiritual life ... and here we are spending four days talking about our feelings and our childhood memories. I was glad to hear this clarification, because I had been afraid that it had something to do with the  ongoing post-election anxiety level in the country and among many Episcopalians, and that's not a weed patch I would have been particularly happy about getting down into. (I suspect that some of the Amen-voicers were coming from such a place, however.)

In the round of plenary discussion that followed the break, I went to the mic and said something like this: "Only a handful of us in the room today, if that, were in the House 25 years ago on the occasion of that last 'blowup' in relationships. Bishops almost came to blows during General Convention, and the room had to be cleared of observers. Since then, the House has focused more on 'process' concerns, building collegiality, and less on 'content' issues. Perhaps what we've seen this morning is a sign of pent-up rebellion against dealing with topics of secondary and tertiary importance while not being given an opportunity to talk about the really urgent concerns that we have in this church. I, for one, believe there is still a great deal of truth that yet needs to be told about the events surrounding the massive departures from our church over the last 10-12 years. I know many are in quiet anguish over the issues of congregational vitality that Marianne Budde raised in her sermon. And I know as well that there are some among us who wish we could speak a word of hope into the political anxiety that has enveloped our society. So perhaps this moment is a test. Perhaps it is a test of whether 25 years of focusing on process concerns and relationship building has actually made us more mature in Christ, whether it has equipped us to once again engage difficult subjects with clarity and candor but still be faithful to our vows to 'respect the dignity of every human being.'"

We broke for lunch at noon, but were seriously off our agenda. When we got back together at 1:30, the head of the Planning Committee reported on the deliberations of the group. This did not include a detailed plan, but, rather, a strong assurance that everything that had been said would be taken into consideration as future meetings are structured. But ... wow, I'm not sure anybody saw this coming.

We then plowed through a list of things that we were supposed to have been dealt with in the morning:

• Greetings from the new CEO of of the DFMS (aka the "church center" in New York).
• A report from the Commission on Impairment and Leadership (this group deals with issues of addiction, mental illness, and personality disorders among bishops).
• A report on the Episcopal-Methodist dialogue. There will be a proposal for a "full communion" agreement in front of the next General Convention.
• A report from the Diocese of Texas concerning some of the planning details of the 2018 General Convention, to be held in Austin.
• A report from the Standing Committee on Structure and Governance. To be honest, I can't remember much of what was said, but it wasn't anything momentous. I think it had something to do with finding ways of measuring the vitality of dioceses.

We took another break, and the reconvened in an official business session (hence the photo above of the officers of the House looking more formal than they usually do), with proper parliamentary procedure. It was mostly pretty humdrum stuff on the order of approving a spate of upcoming retirements and resignations. But the skunk at the garden party was a report from the Task Force on Episcopacy, created by a 2015 General Convention resolution. Their broad mandate is to consider the ways that bishops are selected, formed, and deployed. To everoyne's relief, they have already concluded that bishops should continue to be elected rather than appointed, and that the various dioceses should still be responsible for the electing process. Whew! But they are also considering, among other things, the creaton of a pool of candidates who have already discerned a potential call to episcopal ministry, and are pre-screened, with background check results at the ready. Dioceses looking for a bishop would be encouraged to fish in such a pond. It would all be optional of course, but I can certainly foresee tremendous informal pressure put on dioceses to do just that, with failure to do so coming at the potential cost of difficulties in the consent process for whomever is elected. The driving concern, of course, is for greater diversity of gender and ethnicity among the members of the House of Bishops--a laudable goal, perhaps, but it should be allowed to develop organically. This development is scary, and it should be nipped ferociously in the bud. 

As per custom, our final dinner was a bit upscale, with many of the bishops dressing up. Bow ties were particularly in fashion tonight. Me ...  I just swapped out my hooded sweatshirt for a corduroy sport coat. I'm on the 0530 airport shuttle in the morning. This HOB is in the books now.

2017 Spring House of Bishops, Day 4

This is a forest of giant wild rhodedendrons through which the trail that allows circumambulation of Kanuga Lake passes. It's really quite striking. I walked it this morning during some free time.

Ah ... free time. The plenary schedule finally lightened up today. My own schedule, however, did get an early start, with a 0730 gathering of Communion Partner bishops. We were never actually all together--some aren't here, or aren't still here, and among those who are, there was a lot of coming and going due to conflicting obligations. We broke for breakfast around 0830 and then regathered until about 10.

At that point I kept an appointment with a reporter for Episcopal News Service who wanted to interview me about my experience of this meeting of the HOB. I didn't tell her anything I haven't already written in this venue. She was quite solicitous, but my frustration about such things is that, out of our twenty minute conversation, there may be two things I said that will get quoted in her article, and maybe or maybe not in an appropriate context. I understand that's how the system works, so I'm not getting worked up.

So we didn't convene in plenary session until after lunch. Apart from singing Happy Birthday to the Presiding Bishop and the Bishop of Western Kansas, there were two highlights of the afternoon:

• Canon Mark Stevenson, head of Episcopal Migration Ministries, gave a superb presentation on the work of that ministry of the wider church. Given the current climate of suspicion toward refugees, both within governmental bodies and among the public, they do face their challenges. EMM is a long-established agency; they've been around since 1938, nearly eighty years. They do work right out of Matthew 25.
• Bishop Mark Lattime of Alaska gave us an orientation on the September meeting of the House, which will be in Fairbanks. While our main meetings will be in a comfortable hotel, there will be opportunities for field trips by small aircraft to some of the native villages where the Episcopal Church has long been incarnate in that diocese. 

Between our adjournment and dinner, I took the opportunity for some more walking. Yesterday's snow is gone, but it is miserably cold and rainy. This is why I never have pleasant memories of Kanuga; we're always here in March!

After dinner, we observed one of the mainstays of HOB meetings, the Fireside Chat. With the number who are here, as you can see, it's not a cozy affair, despite its name. It's also not, strictly speaking, "chatty." It's pretty well scripted, though there is opportunity for passing the microphone around and engaging in a modest amount of give and take. The big topics tonight included lots of information about goings-on in the Diocese of Haiti, which is in the midst of some pretty nasty conflict, and an extended presentation from the chair of the House of Bishops Planning Committee about the shape and character of future meetings. For one thing, it looks like they'll eventually be shorter by one day. I can give an Amen to that.

I feel like a horse who can smell the barn and has an urge to turn a trot into a gallop. One more day, and then, homeward bound.

2017 Spring House of Bishops, Day 3

We woke up this morning to about three inches of fresh snow. Here's the view from my room. It was lovely, not only for the way it looked, but because all but a trace in isolated shady patches was gone by midday. That's the best kind of snow, in my opinion.

The day's schedule was ... more of the same. More than a handful of bishops were considering stabbing themselves in the eye with a pencil, including YFNB, but we all resisted the temptation, I'm relieved to report. Yet, even in the midst of that procedural drudgery, there were some treasures to be mined. To be reminded of the distinction between feedback that is conditional, related to behavior, and feedback that is unconditional, related to a person's being, I found helpful. Both kinds can be either positive or negative. The goal, of course, is to avoid giving feedback that is both negative and unconditional.

My hackles were raised a bit by a presentation about subtle versions of discrimination that our facilitators suggested can cloak visceral antagonism with a more respectable façade. A little autobiography might be appropriate here: My mother is a southerner by birth. Visiting her hometown when I was young, I am old enough to remember Jim Crow segregation in all of its ugliness. As a pre-teen and teen, I was s strong supporter of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The absurdity of prejudice based on skin color was patent to me. Our presenters labeled this "old-fashioned" racism. "Modern" racism looks for reasons that sound more respectable but have the same deleterious effect on the "excluded" group--like opposing a program that requires one's children to be bussed to a school an hour a way when there's one right in their neighborhood that they could walk to. While I agree that it possible to mask racism (or any other "ism") in such a way, I am not prepared to use as broad a brush as it seemed to be that our presenters were ready to use.

That said, when one of my tablemates invited me to process the question through the lens of being a "theological minority" victim of such subtle-discrimination behaviors (unhelpful "rescuing," blaming the victim, avoidance, denying differences, denying impact), I must acknowledge that it began to make some sense. Much to ponder.

We are now finished with the presentations from Visions, Inc. Tomorrow we move on to other things. So this is probably the place to say that I wish there had been a much richer theological context to what we did. Visions, Inc. is, I think, Christian-friendly, but not Christian-based. They have a lot of clients in the secular world. A group of Christian bishops should be engaging the issues of racism and racial reconciliation from a platform grounded deeply in our  scriptural and theological tradition. The closest we got to that was this morning's table-group bible study, from Ephesians 2, which is magisterial in its relevance to what we're doing. If we had just spent our whole time together mining that material, we would have been better served.

The afternoon concluded with a celebration of the Eucharist for the Second Sunday in Lent. Many of us wish the Eucharist had been in the morning. It didn't feel like Sunday today; it didn't feel special. Worship at House of Bishops is tricky for me. I don't find it a "safe" place spiritually. Yes, I get "triggered"! So I've been taking a walk instead. But, today being the Lord's Day and all, I went. And I was reminded of all the reasons I've gotten in the habit of staying away (texts from Enriching Our Worship, Spanish laced in throughout, metrical paraphrase of the creed, music 75% from the black gospel genre, etc.)

The sermon, by the Bishop of Washington, contained a comment that I found encouraging. The preacher mentioned that she has some churches in her diocese that she could not in good conscience recommend to somebody who is looking for a church--not because they differ from her theologically or in liturgical preference, but because of a lack of spiritual vitality. Many bishops nodded that the same is the case for them. I've thought about it, and I am not in that category. In the Diocese of Springfield, there are Eucharistic Communities that are more "my cup of tea" than others. But, if I were talking to somebody looking for a church in any of the cities or towns where we have one, I would not hesitate for a moment to recommend the one nearest them. For that, this evening, I am immensely grateful.

2017 Spring House of Bishops, Day 2

Our diversity/anti-racism training regimen continued today. After breakfast, we began at our tables with the usual brief announcements from the appointed "MC" for the day, followed by Morning Prayer led by our chaplains. Then it was back to the team from Visions, Inc. for more of what we began yesterday.

To their credit, the team realizes that, regardless of the quality of the material they present, the real work gets done as it is processed by those who are on the receiving end. So they are giving us lots of time for table discussion--more, in fact, than has ever been my experience at a meeting of the House, whatever the topic. This allows for trust to gradually develop between the bishops at a particular table, which facilitates greater candor and self-disclosure. I have been frustrated over the years at how sensitive and important subjects get very superficial treatment on these occasions. So, while I find some of the material we are being asked to engage questionable on multiple levels, and might even question whether the topic itself is the highest and best use of our time together, I am grateful that we are being given the opportunity to "go deep" with it.

Today we were invited to consider the various ways in which life is made either easier or more difficult for us by virtue of factors over which we have no control. Being white, male, heterosexual, cisgender, English-speaking, formally educated, able-bodied, and ordained, I definitely have a few advantages. The only boxes I could check on the other side of the ledger were immigrant (yes, technically I am an immigrant), and elderly (which makes me, I guess, potentially subject to age discrimination, though, so far, it's been the good kind of discrimination!).

One category not on the handouts, however, but which I summoned the requisite courage to mention at my table, is "theological conservative," which, in the context of the House of Bishops, is not merely a minority but veritably an endangered species. I brought this up with some trepidation, and mention it here with even more, because there are many who will cite all the advantages I enumerated in the preceding paragraph and scoff at the notion that I am even potentially a victim of discrimination or oppression on this score. If that happens, I simply receive and take note of the scoffing. I don't have a clever riposte.

But I was gratified by the openness of my table-mates to hear what I was saying about my experience of the last six years, and to honor the feelings about it that I shared. That in itself doesn't solve very much, but it's not nothing.

The day concluded with dinner out by "classes"--in my case, the other bishops who were elected in 2010. We enjoyed a quite pleasant German restaurant.

2017 Spring House of Bishops, Day 1

It's an odd-numbered year, and I'm at the spring HOB meeting, so I must be at Kanuga, a conference center about a 30 minute drive from the Asheville, NC airport. (On the even-numbered years, we're at Camp Allen, about 60 miles WNW of Houston.)

It's now six years since I chronicled my first HOB meeting on this very site. It was a mercilessly jam-packed schedule, and I did not have a good time. Over the years, the pace slackened quite a bit, with copious free time, particularly leading up to and into Sunday. There was an intentional retreat-like atmosphere built into the experience, with relatively modest amounts of "program."

Well, for various reasons, things have apparently come full-circle, as this meeting is crammed full, with Sunday being no exception. One of Presiding Bishop Curry's passions, and therefore one of his major leadership initiatives, is racial reconciliation. That's the theme of this meeting. We are in the hands of a team of consultants who are leading us through what is essentially a course of anti-racism training.

Full disclosure: I instinctively bristle at anything labeled "training," unless it's a particular physical or psycho-motor skill. Otherwise it smacks of "re-education" of a Bolshevik variety. I am, however, endeavoring to keep an open mind and engage the process in good faith. The work consists of listening to a presentation and then doing small group work at our tables around questions related to what we have just heard.

I can't say that I've yet heard anything that I wasn't already aware of. Much of the morning was spent trying to make the melting pot/salad bowl distinction, which has been around a very long time. During the afternoon, we were invited to consider questions of identity--including ethnic and cultural.  I was aware, and shared with my table group, that I don't feel like I have an ethnic or cultural identity. There are several factors than can help describe me--I was born in Brazil, my mother is a southerner by birth, I was raised in the midwest, I'm an oldest child, I'm left-handed, etc.--but none of these define me. They are not who I am. They are not my identity.

I am copiously on record about my commitment to reconciliation--racial and otherwise--not being merely a part of the gospel, or an effect of the gospel, but the very gospel itself. This is what makes me such a passionate ecumenist, among other things. But gospel reconciliation is not a matter of learning to be more conscious of our biases and unearned privileges, real and important as those things may be. It is not about becoming more open to and accepting of other people's cultural identities, as important as it is to do that. It is about forming community with those who, in Christ, have taken on an identity beside which all others pale in significance. In Christ there is neither Bantu nor Yoruba, Swede nor German, Karen nor Hmong. Gospel reconciliation is predicated on receiving the grace to lay aside secondary identities to embrace the one that truly matters: Christian.

I look forward to seeing whether our "training" here will lead in such a direction.