Category: Blog Entry

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.

So back to business after the excitements of yesterday.

Our Bible Study Group continues to enthrall.  We talked a bit about why bishops seem to suffer so much.  I suspect that the clergy would find that a strange thing to be talking about.  Like other Indaba Groups, we decided that the time had come to suggest that we needed a new working method.  So we’re now in negotiation with ourselves – more time to deal with things in depth and less of the Youth Conference mentality.

Other things .. we don’t seem to be able to contact each other here.  We have no access to each other’s mobile numbers or e mail addresses.  It’s all very well to say that this is because of Data Protection – a simple consent at registration would have dealt with it.  I spend ages waiting for people to come down to the waterhole at sunset.

I spent a bit of time in the worship this morning pondering the spiritualities of all this.  Archbishop Rowan started us off with a tour de force of retreat addresses.  The message was .. ‘get to know one another and pray together .. that’s the foundation for dealing with what we have to deal with.’  I just wish the prayers in worship could grow a bit – different people and nationalities, some pictures and, above all, some silence.  It looks as if a decision was made to allow provinces in turn to lead the morning eucharist – so we lose the possibility of worship which would have a real sense of integration while still expressing that diversity of input.

And finally, you might be amused by Dave Walker’s cartoon on the Windsor Report

The ‘London Day’ is a traditional part of the Lambeth Conference. Alison really enjoyed it. I pretended to be a bit ‘cool’ about it – but I enjoyed it too. And we all did.

On the buses at 7.15 to have us in London in time for the great demo in support of the Millennium Development Goals.

This is one of the issues which really brings us together. How could one not feel strongly about it when one is walking with so many bishops from the developing world? It was hot and the BBC News helicopter was above us filming the endless bald and grey heads. So we wandered along – 680 of us – in cassocks and pectorals accompanied by female spouses [those of us who are male, that is] dressed in clothes fit for a queen [of England, that is]. The journalists I think were counting us lest the Conference organisers might be faking the numbers. We pretended to ignore the protesters – who are becoming part of our landscape – and who wave their ill-written posters at us. I do not carry my glasses.
At Lambeth Palace, we dutifully filed in through a little gate and into an Alice in Wonderland expanse of nine acres. As one who used to look after two acres of lawn, I can see that Rowan is pretty nifty with the ride-on mower and the strimmer on Saturday afternoons.

We listened to a barn-storming speech from Gordon Brown, who seems genuinely passionate in his commitment to this cause. Then, having marched for the eradication of poverty and hunger, we sat down to a beautiful lunch.

And we talked and made more contacts, talked and made more contacts – and it was good. We seem very open to one another – uncomplicatedly unreserved in explaining to another bishop who asks why we feel as we do and how the future looks. If that can find its way through the Indaba Groups we may have a future after all.
After lunch, having stood in line to use the Igloos, we headed off for our second palace of the day for the Buckingham Palace Garden Party. We took tea and queued up for the rather magnificent loos – and ate ice cream and listened to the bands and queued up for the loos just to see if they were as palatial as they were the first time. I flushed experimentally just to see if they would play ‘Rule Britannia’. The Queen is just amazing – she spent over an hour greeting and talking her way through the crowd before she got her cup of tea. As always I am fascinated by the power of royalty – we press forward to see but aren’t quite sure why. We watch as in a zoo, not quite sure which side of the bars of the cage we are.

And we queued up for the loos again just to be sure we wouldn’t get caught short on the way home. Then as the shadows began to lengthen, we headed back – 38 busloads of snoozing bishops ‘n’ spouses.