Bishop Marc

A Place for Everyone, but the Choice is Theirs

There is enough energy -  human, the earth’s, the infinite energy of the divine, to cope with the enormous problems of the world today, chiefly climate change and related human poverty and suffering. It is necessary, though for this energy to be applied and applied wisely for the saving effects to be brought forth. It is too bad that the Roman Catholic Church has chosen to expend funds of its available energy (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/us/catholic-church-unveils-order-for-ex-episcopalians.html) including what might be viewed as a kind of low-level creativity on making a national refuge for disaffected Episcopal priests and the lay people who follow them.

 Make no mistake, these angry ex-Episcopal priests and their flocks are not victims; they have not suffered persecution of any sort other than that they are repulsed by the stance of The Episcopal Church on the status of women and of lesbian, gay, transgendered and bisexual people in the Church and in the world. I can speak with some authority on this, having served in the Episcopal House of Bishops since 2002, a period spanning the explosive events around the election, confirmation, and consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire.

 Throughout this tumultuous decade of The Episcopal Church’s life I have seen the large majority within the House of Bishops act with kindness (understood as a strong virtue here, harkening back to its root that links it with “kin,” such that being kind means recognizing our commonality with others), respect, and charity towards the vocal, active minority, including Jeffrey Steenson, the new head of the ersatz diocese for the unhappy. I was present in the House of Bishops when Mr. Steenson announced his resignation as Bishop of the Diocese of the Rio Grande, and announcement which was met with tears, hugs, and, as Mr. Steenson walked out of the assembly, a standing ovation of affirmation for him.

 The principled stands of The Episcopal Church regarding the status of women and LGBT people did not appear by direct revelation, but they are also not whims of fancy. Rather, they reflect the way Episcopalians have come to understand God – as staying with the world throughout everything, as never abandoning us. Because we, week after week, experience this transforming presence with us in the sacraments of the Church, we understand revelation to be a process of unfolding.

 No, the Church did not ordain women for the bulk of the last two millennia, but in an Episcopalian view of things while we honor (that is, examine carefully, thoughtfully) the deposit of tradition as we seek to make a response to the needs of the world today, we do not assume that the tradition is always right. The Church has been in error on slavery, on women, on LGBT people, and currently I feel it is making only the faintest effort overall on climate change, but the Church has, under the influence of a God who travels with us, reformed time and again.

 Another comment about how we spend our energy: there has been quite a lot of debate within The Episcopal Church about our energy budget, meaning, do we work on HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa or do we promote the recognition of the rights and dignity of women and LGBT people. To think that a choice must be made between these is false on every count I’ve heard put forward. Conservative African bishops will not work with us if we continue down the path we’ve been on in solidarity with LGBT people: Is there not a great enough fund of suffering in Africa and are there not enough potential partners to work with in addressing this suffering to fill any void left if we were cut off by some Church leaders there? The real justice front is with global poverty, not with the recognition of the rights of women and LGBT people: Such an assertion usually conveniently avoids looking at the systemic disempowerment of women and LGBT people globally, and definitely avoids looking squarely at the shocking levels of violence to which both groups are subjected. Finally, there aren’t enough resources to go around, we have to prioritize: Only in some world where we have made a god that is not the God of the universe and its infinite power of love.

 I value my partnership with the Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco on forwarding the Millennium Development Goals, to cite one prominent example of our work together, and I debated with myself as to whether a response to this latest egregious action by the Roman Catholic central authority was worth the energy (see my opening sentence). Overall I concluded that something that gives credit to the amazing laypeople, deacons, priests, and bishops of The Episcopal Church who have courageously held to a course that follows that faintly shining tract through time to which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. pointed (“The arc of history bends towards justice.”), and have done so with malice towards none and charity towards all – that such an effort was well worth it.

 

Sincerely,

+MHA

Occupy::Open - Dispatch #2

I read with interest, and reposted, the Rev. John Merz’ open letter to his bishop regarding the background for his non-violent protest with OWS against Trinity, Wall Street regarding the refusal of Trinity to accede to the OWS demands for use of a vacant lot Trinity owns.

 

My friend, and a former priest of this diocese, the Rev. Daniel Simons, posted a comment on John’s letter, saying, in part, that Trinity’s outreach was something quite different in his experience than presented by John.

 

In light of Daniel’s comments, and in the midst of the continued unfolding around Occupy, I’d like to report my experience with Trinity and Occupy and make some larger observations.

 

Back in November Sheila and I were in New York and contacted Daniel in order to see first hand what Trinity was doing with Occupy. Daniel took us to the basement level of the Trinity office building, where a bright, inviting space had been opened up to the street level, an open meeting place with tables, and wifi, out of the elements. The space is named Charlotte’s Place in honor and memory of a generous benefactor who was known for her hospitality.

 

Charlotte’s Place opened last winter, months before the manifestation of Occupy. Jennifer Chinn heads up Charlotte’s Place. Sheila and I talked with Jennifer, and were impressed by how she fosters a sense of community among the many who drift (or come with great intentionality) into Charlotte’s Place all day long. “If a person is here for more than two hours,” she said, “I speak with them and say they are welcome to stay as long as you’d like, but please understand that from this moment on you are a co-host of this space with me.” I thought this was brilliant. It alerted passive users to the momentary, fleeting but real possibilities of community forming if we open ourselves to it, and are attentive.

 

After speaking with Jennifer I went over to two Occupy protestors. They were young, I would say in their early 20s, and had been part of Occupy from the first week of the occupation. Interestingly, both had come from Austin, Texas, but hadn’t known each other before Occupy. They were in Charlotte’s Place to work on an economic model for Occupy that they intended to present in the General Assembly that week.

 

We talked for about two hours that afternoon. I was very moved by their sincerity, their motivation, their self-understanding. I asked them why they had gotten involved. Sergio spoke first and said that after Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in Tunisia last winter he determined that he would find a way to help prevent other young people from despairing. Gabe responded by saying that he had been looking for a way to be part of societal change that was not ephemeral, like a protest, a march, a demonstration is.

 

I asked them if there was a spiritual or religious grounding in their involvement with Occupy. Sergio said, “I was raised Roman Catholic and became pretty disillusioned with religion through that.  I would have called myself an atheist until recently, but now I can say this – I think the whole world is a living being, and that it is sacred.” Gabe heard this, and said, “ I am an atheist, and I can also say that I think everything in this world is interconnected.”

 

The above is only a small portion of our conversation. I give them to you because they show how earnest and thoughtful these representatives of OWS were, and to point beyond that to Trinity’s providing the container for all that reflection, work, and conversation.

 

Let me end with a couple of observations about Occupy. As I’ve written before, I believed, as we all watched the Arab Spring happen, that the movement there would become global. The two places in particular that I thought about the Arab Spring being enacted were Israel and the United States. Focusing on only our own country for now, the income inequality is so severe here that addressing it is bound to be galvanic in terms of the response from both those who suffer on one end of the scale and those who benefit on the other. Regarding Occupy as a global phenomenon seems to be important to me; that is, we should keep thinking about this, and consciously communicating in world-wide terms. We should remember the careful two-year planning that drew on global sources for peaceful, non-violent action in Tunisia.

 

From a localized point of view, with the current conflict between Trinity and OWS in mind, I’d like to further observe the following: I have seen several suggestions that Occupy needs to move on, find new tactics than the physical occupation of Wall Street and the financial district here in San Francisco, to name two prominent examples. Yes, movements must evolve in order to truly live. On the other hand, I can understand the continued focus on being present in places that have made concerted efforts in the past to keep the poor out (for instance, look at the historic development of urban public transportation pathways, and particularly where such transportation routes did not go). The basic bringing together of people who have been separated allows for mutual transformation.

 

Further, I’m grateful for Trinity’s hospitality to OWS, and am taking it as a model for how we in the Diocese of California can think about our own responses to Occupy here in the Bay Area. My intention is that Trinity’s Charlotte’s Place serve as a metaphor for us, not as a direct transfer – how could Trinity’s example of hospitality be enacted in our own context? What can we learn from the impasse between these two institutions, both of which exist for good?

 

Finally, I’m taking my time with my own responses to Occupy, not because I’m nervous about it – The Arab Spring and this global movement are in fact deeply hopeful. Not because those occupying are not all people who have lost jobs and homes in the current economic crisis, and are in fact in part our “normal” homeless people, street people. It is a good thing that all our invisible brothers and sisters are made visible by this movement, and far from invalidating the movement, the presence of the homeless alongside all others who are protesting is a positive sign. And not because there is not a specific ask; I take some occupiers’ point that a too-specific ask puts a built-in end point to the movement – when this bill is passed we will quietly melt away, for instance. Rather, this movement is about societal transformation, as I understand it. Thus, I’m acting in a way that believes that transformation is possible; I don’t have to hurry and make my point or act right away or I will have missed all the action. My deliberation is an act of faith that Martin Luther King, Jr. was right when he said that the arc of history bends towards justice. Or, put another way, the mills of the Lord grind slow but exceeding fine.

 

+MHA

Occupy::Open - Dispatch #1

It was Friday before a typically busy, full weekend. In my heart and mind, throughout all the important agenda items that justly fill my thoughts, I had been brooding about Occupy. Then I got a call asking how I might react to the possibility of the Episcopal Churches in San Francisco providing respite care for the Occupy San Francisco protesters so that the violence that erupted in Oakland would not be repeated in San Francisco. Obviously I said that we would help.

 

I immediately wrote all the vicars and rectors in San Francisco, and in Oakland, and said that I hoped we could help, and that I wanted their ideas, and the ideas that emerged in consultation with their lay leaders, and out of conversation with the Occupy protesters.

 

What happened next is Beloved DioCal, or, Occupy San Francisco/Oakland::Open DioCal. I got immediate responses, overwhelming responses from most of the vicars and rectors. They were talking to their vestries and bishop’s committees, they were getting up and going down to the encampments and protest sites and talking with the protesters, they were expressing their immediate willingness to respond in compassion, and they expressed it thoughtfully – “We can mobilize volunteers, but is respite care what the protesters want and need? I’d like to find out from them and evolve a response from among ourselves with them” – that response was repeated in different words by many.

 

On Wednesday a group of DioCal clergy and lay people traveled from San Francisco to Oakland to be part of the general strike called for by Occupy across the United States by the Occupy Oakland protesters. Here is what one of them wrote to me:

 

“It was a really invigorating protest, with only a little bit of property destruction (broken windows at banks, tags sprayed on buildings including the Cathedral of Christ the Light and Whole Foods). The VAST majority of the protesters where calling the violent folks out and insisting they stop. I had a few conversations with people, mostly folks who came in for the protest and march. There were two little girls with bundles of sage and an older Latino man was showing them how to bless people with the sage - I was blessed by a girl with blue braids woven in her hair. There was some loud conversations between protesters and observers, I think about the property damage. The press is reporting about 3500-4000 protesters, and honestly I couldn't tell if it was more or less - people were spread out all over the blocks around Frank Ogawa Plaza.”

 

Not two weeks ago I expressed my continuing belief that God has made the Diocese of California a place of the greatest possibility, and that for that possibility to come into being, for Christ to continue to incarnate among us, asks for openness from us, the intentional opening, moment by moment, of our hearts. This response from our diocese came to me as blessing of affirmation of my faith in God working among us.

 

My friend, the Rev. Daniel Simons, recently of All Saints Company in DioCal and now at Trinity, Wall Street, says there is no 1% and 99%, but only 100% - we are all in this together. This is a truth that overlights but does not erase tensions, differences, and even injustices. One reason I have been brooding about Occupy is that I know numbers of wealthy people in DioCal who are so committed to using their wealth to create fairness, eliminate suffering, address the root causes of poverty. The role of the Church is to make sure that no one is reduced to a statistic, a percentage. Rather, we are called to create contexts for conversation, for understanding, and so for conversion and transformation – on all sides.

 

On October 31, Sheila and I traveled to New York for a diverse series of meetings. I wrote Daniel Simons before we left and asked if he could make time to talk with us about his experience with Occupy Wall Street. We had an extraordinary day on Tuesday talking with Daniel, going to Zuccotti Park, talking with protesters at Charlotte’s Place, and with the director and staff there. In my next dispatch on Occupy I’ll report on the visit to Occupy Wall Street.

 

+MHA

 

 

celebrating the most senior bishop in the episcopal church

During one of the intense walk-about sessions in the process leading to the election of a bishop for the Diocese of California in April 2006, Sheila and I were in a packed room, getting ready to respond to a new round of questions, when a person moved up to me and said, “You are not the only bishop in the room, Bishop Millard is here.” This man took me over to a slender, elderly man, and introduced me. Bishop Millard was 92 at the time. I immediately liked his hospitable aspect, his good humor, and his quick intellect.

 

Yesterday, October 2, 2011 was his 97^th birthday. As our Presiding Bishop announced at the House of Bishops meeting in Ecuador, Richard Millard is the most senior bishop in The Episcopal Church. As serendipity would have it, Sheila and I were already planning to be at the parish where he worships, Christ Church, Portola Valley, on the afternoon of his birthday to welcome people to one of the concerts by Les Petites Chanteurs, the boys choir from the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti.

 

Bishop Millard attended the concert, the children and all of us attending sang “Happy Birthday” to him, and then Sheila and I were honored to take him to dinner in celebration of this amazing life thus far. Here are a few of the things I’d like to share with you about Bishop Richard Millard.

 

He was born in 1914, the year World War 1 began, in Shasta, California, far in the north of the state. His parents were working class people, and religiously his mother was a Presbyterian. His parents were not at all church-going people, but his mother dropped him off at the Presbyterian Sunday School, the only of the three siblings interested in religion.

 

He went to UC Berkeley, and it was there he became an Episcopalian through the work of a student chaplain. Dick majored in education, because he loved the positive contributions that teaching had made to his life, but he found the curriculum deadening. He came to believe that the ministry of teaching might be pursued under a larger heading, in ordained ministry, and went to EDS (then ETS) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Evaluating his education, he said he wasn’t really prepared for serious graduate work; he had had a good elementary education, but mediocre educations in high school and college. ETS was a challenge, but one that called the best out in him intellectually. He was one of the only students of his small class (9 men) to take courses at Harvard while at ETS.

 

After ordination, Dick served as a curate at St. James’, Madison Avenue. At the parish of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Richard came to realize that the ministry open to him was to provide support and pastoral care to the wealthy parishoners’ servants, a role he valued greatly. Indeed, I have come to see that Bishop Millard has framed his life in terms of being a middle child – not the leader but one who works faithfully for the support of the whole, including supporting the vision of the leader.

 

Sheila and I have visited Bishop Millard’s apartment and when I commented on the stunning icons on the walls there, I learned that he was the artist who made them. Sunday evening we learned that he spent four month-long vacations in the Balkans as a student of writing icons.

 

After he retired as a bishop, having served with Bishop Pike and as the Suffragan Bishop for the American Convocation of Churches in Europe, and at the Episcopal Church Center in New York, Bishop Millard went to St. Mary’s College in Moraga, CA and completed a graduate degree in psychology. He was over 80 when he finished his degree, and then went on to work as a Veterans Hospital Chaplain until he was 90. He retired from the chaplain’s job, telling the hospital administration who were urging him to stay on, “I think it is time for you to find some younger people to do this job.”

(photo by James Kaspar)

 

+MHA

you and everyone else are what you eat; dispatch from Quito 3

“What we eat is one of our most basic moral choices.” That was how the Rev. Dr. Michael Floyd began his great sermon this morning in Quito at Advent/St. Nicholas Episcopal Church. He was preaching on the Old Testament lesson for today, from the Book of Exodus:

²The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. ³The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.’

4 Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I will test them, whether they will follow my instruction or not. ⁵On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather on other days.’ ⁶So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, ‘In the evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, ⁷and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your complaining against the Lord. For what are we, that you complain against us?’ ⁸And Moses said, ‘When the Lord gives you meat to eat in the evening and your fill of bread in the morning, because the Lord has heard the complaining that you utter against him—what are we? Your complaining is not against us but against the Lord.’

9 Then Moses said to Aaron, ‘Say to the whole congregation of the Israelites, “Draw near to the Lord, for he has heard your complaining.” ’ ¹⁰And as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the Israelites, they looked towards the wilderness, and the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. ¹¹The Lord spoke to Moses and said, ¹²‘I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, “At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.” ’

13 In the evening quails came up and covered the camp; and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. ¹⁴When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. ¹⁵When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, ‘What is it?’^* For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, ‘It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.

He went on to say that when we don’t eat in rhythm with the patterns of the earth’s energies, we will profane the earth.

 

In the Exodus story, taking food for granted is associated with bondage, because when we have surplus as a regular condition of life, we can come to disregard the reality of others’ needs, and even our own – we simply expect food to be there. Thus, we are living under a delusion, and are not free as we were created to be.

 

On the other hand, having just enough, eating out of simplicity, can be associated with freedom.

 

Michael went on in specific ways: “Industrialized agriculture carries us far from ‘just enough. It displaces small farmers, the food produced is less nutritious, tasty, and may contain toxins; it leaves the land exhausted.”

 

It was a powerful sermon.

 

There was a forum to respond to the sermon afterwards, and I’ll throw in some thoughts of mine and some more things I learned from it:

 

Food sovereignty, a response to industrialized agriculture, that gives local communities choice and control over their food, and encourages local production and local consumption, is written into the constitution of Ecuador. I thought about how our U.S. Constitution really enshrines some of our country’s highest values and priorities, and I thought once again about the Baptismal Covenant of the Episcopal Church, how formative and central it has been for us since we adopted the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. The last clause is this:

Celebrant      Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
People          I will, with God’s help.

 

What if we added something that gave centrality, priority to the earth and its status, like, “…and respect the dignity of the Earth, the creatures of the Earth, and of every human being?”

A parishoner spoke up regarding localvore eating, and the slow-food movement, both aspects of Food Sovereignty, " My wife and I lived in Buenos Aires for ten years. It is a city with a strong Italian influence, which showed in the lengthy preparation of meals, and the three hour+ meals that ensued, the food being the base upon which lots of conversations, sometimes I remember six going at the same time. I think the long preparation was bound up with the deep respect for what would take place during the meal, the eating, and the sharing of ideas and emotions."

 All the above prompted me to remember that the word “aesthetic” has a root meaning relating to eating. For me, Michael’s sermon opener, “What we eat is a basic moral choice,” has meaning that includes what ideas we feast on, what emotions, the cultural surround we choose. We live in a deeply interconnected world, and the choices we make in any of these areas, the food, the images, the ideas, the conversations, can affect all the others, and beyond our individual selves we may contribute to either the health or the ill-health of the earth, its creatures and every human being by the fundamental moral choices we make.

Note: the photo is from Ecuador, the Ayme family, from the superlative Time photo essay, "What the World Eats 1."

 

+MHA

Dispatch from Quito, 2

Today bishops and spouses and partners fanned out across the country: some made a 4.5 hour bus trip to the border to witness the struggles of Columbians seeking refuge in Ecuador. Another group went to Ibarra, visiting a church community there and a huge market of indigenous crafts and arts.

 

I was part of a group that stayed in Quito, but journeyed a long distance in culture and economics, to Sector Comité del Pueblo, a community of poor and working class people who squatted some thirty years ago on a large swath of a valley that absentee landowners had left fallow. They finally had recognized land rights, and have created a vibrant community, which has a wonderful Episcopal mission in it, Mission Cristo Libertador, Christ the Liberator.

 

One friend, a bishop I’ve known for many years, said, as we got out of the bus and stepped onto the street in the barrio, “It smells like the Old City of Jerusalem, or really any street in the developing world, there are a lot of things that tie them together.”  Other things that are the same: many children on the street.

 

We entered the mission church through a door right off the street, and immediately I was filled with emotions as the aisle was lined with men and women and children greeting us. There welcome was so warm, their faces so beautiful, and open. I felt immediately at home, one of the truest homes I’ve ever known, the Episcopal Church, everywhere different, everywhere the same, knit together in Christ.

 

The plan was for us to be in the mission church for Morning Prayer, then join the senior citizens for a simple breakfast, and then walk a few blocks to a day care center run by the church.

 

Some highlights: The opening song had this refrain: “May we always have hearts without doors; may we always have open hands.” Immediately I remembered what I learned this past spring about the Guarani people, they call themselves the people with open hands. What that means is that as they receive something – money, material possessions, emotional investment, ideas – they are thinking about how they can enhance the gift, and pass it on.

 

The Guarani, through several centuries of experience with colonizing Western culture have learned to call us the people of the closed hands; people who immediately invest energy in how to hold onto possessions of all kinds.

 

These people were not the Guarani, but there were many indigenous people there, or Creole people, or people who held the same values as the Guarani. I wondered how our economy, our very lives would be transformed if we adopted this way of looking at the world.

 

Also, at one point just after Morning Prayer, the children came to us, each carrying a card they had made. Mine is most beautiful, with Christ in a great arc of golden glitter.

 

Also, in this time after worship, the senior warden came forward to speak. A woman who has been active in this congregation for twenty years, she both welcomed us warmly and spoke passionately about an acute, wide-spread conflict in the Diocese of Ecuador Central. What struck me most in her talk was this; “We have learned how to struggle from our parents. We love the Episcopal Church and we will struggle for it.” Her parents’ courage and perseverance were lessons she had absorbed, and the lessons of their strength were learned and enacted by her and her generation. I suddenly felt some confidence about how this conflict would resolve in Ecuador – with “winning” by these people of modest material resources, but winning as Christ wins, with the weapons of the Spirit, in this case with hearts without doors and hands always open.

 

MHA

Dispatch from Quito

Being here in Quito and having background reading assigned on William Temple seemed odd to me, until the first of our speakers on the topic of “Scriptural Bases for Prophetic Proclamation to the Least”, Don Compier, began his talk. He told us that an eminent liberation theologian, one of his own teachers, credited Temple with being a major fountainhead for the creation of an approach to theology that would come to be called Liberation Theology. As Don put it, Liberation Theology had an Anglican birth!

After Don, the next speaker was our own Companion Diocese Bishop, Naudal Gomes. Bishop Naudal has been deeply shaped by both Liberation Theology and by the spirituality of the Franciscans. It was interesting to be a listener and hear Bishop Naudal talk about the  mission of their diocese, about the common mission between California and Curitiba, and about the Dominican Republic environmental sustainability gathering we co-hosted last fall.

He reminded me about something I learned from the Guarani people I visited this past spring. The Guarani, the first people the colonizing Portugese meet, were nomads, but there was always a general direction to their movment – they moved towards the East, because they believed that there was a land of unending life in the East.

Bishop Naudal told us that he said to a Guarani chief he met (the same one who was so hospitable with me), “Then we are walking together; I too am always moving East, the direction of eternal life, of resurrection.”

MHA

Sacred Space at St. Dorothy's Health Camp

The children and young people, thirty-seven of them ranging in age from 8-18, were gathered outside in a ragged circle around a stylized tree, covered with wooden leaves, each one decorated with paint, markers, and glitter. Around the young people towered living redwoods. One by one children spoke up: “My family is on the Tree,” “Music,” “Creativity,”…”My heart,”…”My liver.”  Finally, one young person spoke up; “St. Dorothy’s, this is sacred to me. As much as my family loves me, as great as my friends are at school, this is the only place on earth where I’m at home, where I’m understood, and totally accepted.”

This was the final day of Health Camp 2 at St. Dorothy’s this summer, a camp for young people who have received major organ transplants: heart, bowel, kidney or liver. I had was the chaplain for the week, joining an extraordinary team of counselors and volunteers, most of whom were there for the whole summer, and a team of nurses from the Lucille Packard Stanford Children’s Hospital.

Katie Evenbeck and I agreed on Health Camp 2 as the best time in the summer for me to really be part of the summer camp experience this year, something I have been eager to do since coming to be Bishop of California. While serving as a priest in the Diocese of Virginia I spent four hectic but exhilarating and deeply satisfying summers as the chaplain at Shrine Mont, one of the camp and conference centers in that diocese (they are enormously blessed, as are we, by having not only one center, but two). I could paraphrase Robert Fulghum and say that everything I learned in life I learned at camp, but the learning came later in life.

Anyway, there was a challenge to being chaplain at this particular camp, that went even beyond the campers’ fragile health and the strictures this placed on camp practices (diet restrictions, sport restrictions, times for getting medications, as examples) – this was a secular camp. Being chaplain for a secular camp session…

Katie did tell me that the theme for the whole camp season this year was “Finding the Sacred in Our Lives.” I carried this around in my heart all spring, thinking of what we could do for chapel time during Health Camp 2. And then Sheila and I went for another visit to the Bali exhibit at the Asian Art Museum.

For a three week period three artists of the sacred sat on a platform in the central hall of the museum, fashioning clay plaques in eight different colors. The plaques were mounted on a framework of wood and chicken wire, and when completed it was the Tree of Life, the sacred cosmos.

Perfect! We could create our own Tree of Life during the week of Health Camp 2. I floated the idea to Katie, and we were off! Ben Evenbeck and two of his carpenter friends made a beautiful frame and a bunch of wooden leaves. I worked with the campers each day, deepening and broadening the idea of the sacred in everyday life: What is universally sacred? What is personally sacred? What is sacred for this camp?

Late on Friday night, the last night of camp, Katie and I and two counselors sat with a group of teens in the velvety darkness on Lydia Point, the shadowed land falling away beyond us, a group of people perched on the edge of the world. They wanted to talk about their grief over the death of one of their friends, a camper who had come for years, but died suddenly before Health Camp 2 in 2010. Their conversation was loving, funny, deeply touching for me. At the end Katie began a circle of prayer, which I ended, lifting all of this up to God, the one as near us as the night, and who yet fills the whole universe.

The next day, on one of the last leaves placed on the Tree of Life, our picture of the sacred universe, there was the name of their friend who had died. Evergreen, alive in God’s infinite, beautiful cosmos.

The tree of life as it appeared at San Francisco's Asian Art Museum (above), and our version at St. Dorothy's Health Camp 2 (below) with Katie and Ben Evenbeck.

We don't choose the moment of apocalypse

We are in an apocalyptic moment. By definition such moments are hard to recognize. An apocalyptic moment is to our world as Baptism is to an individual: “You have been baptized into the death of Christ, that you might be raised with him.” In Baptism I am asked to recognize those things in my life that are in the realm of death, that hold me back from receiving the life God is always waiting to give me, if I make room for it by clearing the dead away.

 

In an apocalyptic moment the world is tested to manifest the Body of Christ, the Christ of the world and not only of my family, tribe, or nation. One of the marks of a living Christ in the world is how we treat our enemies. Last Friday the largest congregation in history heard a reading from the New Testament. Three billion people listened as James Middleton read with careful enunciation and emphasis a passage from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. In part he read, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse…Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.”

 

Osama bin Laden qualified himself as our enemy, and indeed as a world enemy. I believe our President is right when he say that bin Laden received justice. Now then comes our moment, when the many of us, myself included, who say “Lord, Lord” are judged not by our words, but by our deeds (the reference is the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 7, a chapter that begins with “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. ²For with the judgement you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.”)

 

My prayer is the prayer that ends the Book of the Apocalypse, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.” Be manifest in our world, our whole world, our world whole.

 

 

Chrism Mass Sermon

You are God's field.

On Tuesday during Holy Week, the clergy of the Diocese of California come together at Grace Cathedral to renew their ordination vows. At that service, I bless the oils of Infirmarum (for healing) and of Chrism (for Baptism and other blessing), and then the oil is divided into small bottles for the clergy to take back to their congregations.

The sermon that I preached at that service is available here.