Extraordinary how autumnal it feels already - or is it just my age? The combine harvesters are encircling Blogstead and we’re soon going to have to keep Poppy in for her own safety. We’re about to have a series of visitors and we’ll be glad to see them. People come and enter into the soap opera of our lives .. and go away pondering.

Meanwhile, I had a very interesting post-Lambeth meeting with our clergy. I used about half of the Lambeth DVD. I think that many found it both revelatory and reassuring to see bishops from all over the world talking in very measured terms about the issues which face us. Particularly impressive, I thought, was the video of Tom Shaw of Massachusetts and Philip Baji of Tanga, Tanzania. Tom was a member of my Bible Study Group. The film showed their efforts to make links of friendship and understanding across gaps of culture and theology.

Just one more from Humph - this time in Glasgow:

.. and so, as the chill wind of time blows up the kilt of destiny and the short-sighted octopus of fate tries to mount the bagpipes of eternity ..

Poppy’s fans will be glad to know that she is safely home after enjoying pre-and-post Lambeth hospitality in Belfast. She came as a paws passenger again on the Stena to Stranraer - much more hospitable towards her than the P&O which seems a bit iffy.

It’s as well I watch almost no TV since there is almost no TV to watch other than the Olympics - the sporting equivalent of the Lambeth Conference. It’s all very moving to the point of misty-eyed, of course. But as I listen to the victors saying how wonderful it is to have the reward for all the hard work and sacrifice, I wonder about the others. Do they just tiptoe away and get on with their lives? Those who put in great effort in ministry for little visible result can of course say through gritted teeth, ‘One sows and another reaps’

For some reason, I’ve had Humphrey Lyttleton’s sign-off lines from ‘I’m sorry I haven’t a clue’ running through my mind. Is the end nigh, I wonder?

“As the vanquished charwoman of time begins to Shake-n- Vac the shagpile of eternity, I notice that we have just run out of time.”

I was glad to go to the 10th Anniversary celebrations at the Bield yesterday.  It’s a centre for rest and relaxation, prayer and healing - just on the edge of Perth.  Robin and Marianne Anker-Petersen and their team have created a wonderful resource.  Every time I go there, I am impressed by the number of people I meet who are not church members but who recognise this as a place of peace, healing and spiritual resource.

This is the Chapel - once the carpenter’s shop.  Part of what makes this such a special place is the beauty of the grounds and the under-stated good taste of the house.

I dipped my toe in the Enneagram water.  But, after three weeks of Lambeth, it seems that I have little idea who I am any more.

Not much sign of the ‘Culte Carla’ in France. Surprisingly, we found ourselves surrounded by the Culte Protestant and small villages each with its large Eglise Evangelique.

But it was time to finish digesting Lambeth and go home. English Diocesan Bishops are giving their summaries of how it was. You can read them on Thinking Anglicans. Our clergy are meeting next week to hear what I thought about it. So I’ll have to do some thinking.

We had an extremely rough trip home on the Zeebrugge-Rosyth ferry - Force 9 and china-crashing rough. It was a long night in the Scheheradze Karaoke Bar. As Liaison Bishop for the Mission to Seafarers in Scotland, I felt it was an important opportunity in ministry to contribute ‘Eternal Father, strong to save.’ I was just swinging into ‘Wide, wide as the Ocean’ with actions when I was unceremoniously hustled off the stage with cries of ‘A la Manche!’

And so back to the rustic simplicities of Blogstead.   TS Eliot echoes in the mind: ‘And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/and know the place for the first time.’  The new neighbours have moved in and will begin the ‘Getting to know you’ programme shortly. +Bruce is watching his lettuces grow. All is calm. Indeed, Blogstead in such moments seems to be located in neither time nor space. More, as the French might say, une idee … une saveur douce, piquante et un peu exotique.

There’s an end of term feeling around today.  Tomorrow still has a full programme which ends with the Service in Canterbury Cathedral - after which we’ll be nipping through the Tunnel to worship for a short while at the shrine of ‘Culte Carla’.

Not really a moment for assessment and evaluation.  Except to say that I think that many of the participants here have rediscovered the much-vaunted ‘bonds of affection’ and therefore are feeling rather less affection for the idea of Anglican Covenant.  But, as one of the hymns this morning said, we need somehow to ‘disentangle peace from pain’.

And how do I feel about it all?  Well on many levels, it’s been one of the truly great experiences - an extraordinary meeting of the world church and a great privilege to be part of it.  The Bible Study Group will remain the pinnacle of that.  It was at times a sublime experience.  If you’ve been reading regularly, you’ll know that I have said some hard things about the process of the Conference and I still feel that.  But this has been ‘one person’s view’ of Lambeth and it doesn’t diminish in any way my gratitude to the organisers and the stewards for the extraordinary amount of devoted work they have done to make this happen.

Thank you for reading - and for the comments.  I’m a bit blog-spent now so I’m going to take a break until we regain the peace of Blogstead mid-month.

Yes

Churches are always messy and frustrating places.  That’s why domestic violence within the church is always an issue.  That’s why - or I think that’s why - we had a major session on it in searing heat in the Big Top two days ago.  I have no idea whether it was either necessary or helpful.  I know that I felt both manipulated and stigmatised - quite enough to be going on with for one morning.  And the Stewards were keeping a tally of the number of men who left.
But - to go back to the messy and frustrating stuff of the Church.  I agree with the other bloggers who have been saying that new understandings have been emerging here.  I’ve heard them in my Bible Study Group and Indaba Group.  The Bible Study has gathered a clear sense that prayerful reading and study of scripture in the context of trusting relationships will yield new strands of insight to lead us forward.

We’ve explored the tension between definition and imagination.  I feel in many places a growing feeling that the excursion towards covenant territory has been useful but will not yield an answer. Indeed it may hinder the kind of explorations which are needed. It will ensure that our focus is on the internal workings of the church when it needs to be exactly the opposite of that.  If we are going to have a Covenant, I remain attracted by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ suggestion that it should be a Covenant of Faith predicated on difference.
The session today called in response to Archbishop Rowan’s call for generous suggestions from those holding the two positions he outlined in his address proved to be a serious mistake.  I heard no suggestions of any great value and, as a result, the meeting became tetchy.  I still think that something can be done here - but there needs to be a roadmap of symbolic words and actions which allow the two groups to move towards one another.

Three days to go.  Counselling sessions are under way to help those of us who have become completely institutionalised and fear that we may not be able to cope with the traffic noise.  And we have to move the beds back.  The Management, thankfully, ran the white pyjamas up the flagpole some time ago.

I’m grateful for the comments on yesterday’s post.  This whole place is full of putative oppositional pairings at present - justice and righteousness being just another of the more common.  I think Archbishop Rowan took a calculated risk in setting out his picture of the two groups as he did.  There seems to be some kind of tentative dialogue stirring and that is to be welcomed.  If I have any answer to Kimberly’s question as to where the centre might be, I think it is probably among those who can identify with both sides of this issue and who are unable to reach a clear and final view on it.

Gene Robinson addressed a meeting here this evening.  I felt I needed to go and hear him and so I did.

It’s been unbelievably and unrelentingly hot here for the past two weeks and a fair measure of weariness is setting in.  At Evening Worship today, what should have been a three minute address in a stifling big top stretched to 15.  I resisted the temptation to leave - but only just.  We’ve been here now for 15 days.  Four more to go.  Satis superque again.

You may find Archbishop Rowan’s second Presidential Address interesting.  Coming today - immediately after a remarkable address to the Conference from Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks - it attempts to set out where we are in the Anglican journey and in the progress of the Conference with  five days to run.

Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks produced a truly remarkable address for which he was given a standing ovation.  He made a heartfelt plea to the Conference to stay together.  He set out a visit of Covenant:

‘A covenant of faith …….  is made by a people who share dreams, aspirations, ideals.  They don’t need a common enemy, because they have a common hope.  They come together to create something new.  They are defined not by what happens to them but by what they commit themselves to do.  That is a covenant of faith’

He also produced the telling phrase that a Covenant is predicated on difference.  In short, without saying that he was doing so, he challenged the Anglican Communion to find an expression of Covenant which acknowledges difference and looks to the future.  In the light of that vision, the current proposed version of the Covenant looks both mousey and legalistic.

Archbishop Rowan’s vision is that we should speak:

‘from the centre. I don’t mean speaking from the middle point between two extremes — that just creates another sort of political alignment. I mean that we should try to speak from the heart of our identity as Anglicans; and ultimately from that deepest centre which is our awareness of living in and as the Body of Christ.’

He went on to give a clear and sympathetic version of the two key positions of groups at this Conference and he appealed to them to give to each other enough to enable us all to move forwards.

On that basis, I couldn’t argue with a word of it.  But, as I listened, it seemed to me that there is more that might be said.

First .. there is another centre in this conference - a significant group which is not identified with either of the main ideological groupings.  One of the objectives must surely be to affirm and strengthen that centre in order to balance the strength of the more extreme groups.  In effect, that centre group is always in danger of being marginalised.

Second.. it is all very well to appeal to people to move towards each other.  But I think you need to set out a sort of roadmap of how that might happen .. words and symbolic actions which might embody the necessary changes.  In Northern Ireland, people used to talk about ‘walking towards each other across the rubble.’

Third .. I constantly hear concern about a tendency to assume a sort of moral equivalence across a range of things which have happened.  A bishop who happens to be in a committed same-sex relationship is elected and consecrated in TEC in accordance with their polity.  To be sure, it raises all sorts of issues about the relationship of TEC with the rest of the Communion.  But I still find it hard to see that as being equivalent to the incursions of other Primates across provincial boundaries.

Great Scottish night out this evening.

At breakfast this morning, someone passed me TS Eliot’s response to the report of the Lambeth Conference of 1930. He says, ‘The Report … is rather the exposition of the ways in which the church is moving than an instruction to the faithful on belief and conduct.’ In other words, a staging post rather than an end point.
Readers of this blog will know that I have always believed that people were over-hyping this conference. I have never expected that this might be the point at which the big issues in the Anglican Communion would be finally sorted out. I think that the most we can expect is that some positive movement will emerge - a new dynamic which may help us to deal with our diversity. For myself, I can say that I feel part of the Anglican Communion now in a way which I have never felt before. I have acquired friends all over the Anglican world and they will remain part of my landscape. There is also evident everywhere in this Conference a desire to cohere - people understand that we shall all be diminished if we lose the struggle to remain together.

Our Bible Study Group continues to deal with the difficult issues with courage and grace.
But ..

I don’t think the Indaba process will deliver what we need. We would need to set for hours and hours.  We are giving too little time to it and trying to cover too much ground.

This Conference has been running for nearly two weeks. I simply cannot understand why it will be Thursday before we reach ‘The Bishop and Human Sexuality.’ To rush the big issues at the end of a Conference is never wise. I went today to the hearings of the Windsor Continuation Group. Bishops from all over the world were being allowed three minutes each to speak on very complex issues - yellow card after two minutes and red after three. Differences were being aired with grace and dignity. But it was not a graceful or dignified process.

If there is a channel through which issues like this can be raised with the management of the conference, I have not yet found it.  Maybe there are different cultures at work here as regards expectations of how a conference can evolve as it happens.

Smallest at the back. It was fiercely hot. The photograph is one of those iconic Lambeth moments - frozen in time for ever on Diocesan Office walls all over the world. But maybe times change. As we stood in tiers where the saints had stood, I pondered the great figures of the past who are remembered in areas of the Blogstead Gardens - Bell, Temple and the others. I doubt if they and their contemporaries would have sung Amazing Grace in 680 part harmony while they waited in searing heat for the photographer to GET ON WITH IT. Which he did.

Meanwhile, we carry on conferencing. Today is a day out. I’ve chosen not to go and preach in a parish in the Canterbury Diocese. Lots of people with much more interesting stories to tell than mine. We’re going to do some family visiting and catch our breath. We start with Eucharist at 7.15 am and it’s been non-stop until I write the blog somewhere before or after midnight. We’ve done ten days of that and there are seven to go. And it’s been hot and humid.

In the last two days, the Indaba Groups have looked at ecumenical matters and the environment. I was slightly startled at how rapidly the group I was in dismissed the entire world of institutional ecumenical engagement. The opening video about the work of the WCC simply generated anger. Irrelevant, unhelpful, out of date, incomprehensible .. were some of the comments. I don’t think I have ever known a more arid time for ecumenical relationship. If this Conference is about the role of the bishop as leader of mission, I think we must pin our hopes on ‘Growing together in mission.. ‘

The environmental discussion was interesting. In my group it became a ‘wake-up’ call from bishops from the Third World to the rest of us. We need to hear it.

We’re still wrestling with the Indaba Group method. We’re going to try some variations on the working method next week. In our Bible Study we’re going to continue to talk about the difficult stuff and bring that to the Indaba Group. Maybe. But elsewhere there are signs of hope - difficult agendas are coming to the surface and being explored patiently.