"Video Wrap-up Of GC"

From Lisa at My Manner Of Life:

Thanks to Susan Russell for drawing attention to this fine video by Jim DeLa (Director of Communications, Diocese of Southwest Florida). As Susan writes, "You could just cue up this 6-ish minute video in the Parish Hall on Sunday, do a Q&A after and call it a day on the "What did they do at General Convention" Forum!"

The video has already made the rounds of many of the blogs, but here it is again, at 6 minutes plus, if you have not seen it and care to watch.

A Great Big Thank You!

Ever since I returned from Anaheim, I've wanted to post about the very hard work of the members of both houses at GC. I'm late, but you know how the saying goes - BLTN. It was no vacation at Disneyland for the bishops and deputies. In addition to the regular sessions of the two houses, there were endless committee meetings which started early in the morning and others that lasted late into the night. A good deal of the work of the convention was moved along with the help of the committee meetings.

From my heart, I thank all deputies and bishops for their dedication and hard work at the convention. Most of them returned home exhausted. Being on the premises, I witnessed their diligence firsthand, and I gained insight into the great gifts that they contribute to the well-being of our church.

Several delegates who have served at more than one convention told me that GC09 was one of the best-organized in their experience. I thank those who worked for months, and even years, before convention to ensure that the actual work of the meetings proceeded smoothly.

Bishop Katherine and HOD president, Bonnie Anderson, deserve a good deal of credit for the calm, assured, and fair manner in which they conducted the meetings of the two houses.

And last, but not least, because the convention could not have happened without them, I commend the many volunteers who gave so generously of their time and presence. In my dealings with volunteers, in nearly every case, I found them to be helpful and unfailingly polite and patient.

Thank you all! Virtual hugs and kisses to all, including those of you whom I don't know and will never know.

The Things I Do For My Grandchildren

 

Do you want to hear about my day? I know that you do. I know Lindy does. Lindy said at Facebook that she lives for the minutiae of my life, and I believe her, because Lindy ia a truth-teller. Here goes.

My grandson (or part of him) is pictured above, proudly wearing his T-shirt that his dad bought for him. He had the persistent ear infection that I mentioned in my prayer request. Thanks be to God, the ministrations of doctors, and the prayers of all of you, the infection is much better.

The doctor who treated him at urgent care on Friday night, told my son that he should see his pediatrician today, my first destination after I picked up my grandchildren at their house. My granddaughter, the little mother to her brother, made the doctor's appointment. I would have done it, but she wanted to do it herself. After his pediatrician pronounced his ear free of drainage and visible infection, the children wanted Blizzards. If there's anything I can't resist, it's a Blizzard. I don't need a Blizzard, but if I'm in Dairy Queen, I will have a Blizzard. We each had our Blizzard.

After we slurped our Blizzards, we came to my house for an hour until it was time for GS to go to his handwriting class. Then I was off to drop him at the handwriting class, which lasts an hour, and then on to my son's house, which is nearer to the location of the handwriting class. After about 45 minutes, I left to pick up GS at his handwriting class, returned to his house, and waited there for my son to get home from work. Then I came home.

When I was much younger and had young children, I disliked running around and dropping children here and there and everywhere. That was NOT one of my favorite activities as a mother. It made me cranky. Now here I am approaching a quarter century the three quarter-century mark on this good earth, running around and dropping children off again. I don't know how or why, but I'm doing it with a good deal more grace than in my younger years. It was exhausting then, and it's exhausting now, but I do it, for the most part, with good humor. Isn't that amazing?

About my grandson's T-shirt - my husband and my sons are responsible hunters, and my grandson will likely join them when he is of age. I eat and enjoy what they kill on their hunts. I won't listen to complaints about hunting from any meat eaters. Vegetarians amongst my readers are free to complain. If you eat meat, I won't listen. At my house, the game is there, and I eat it and enjoy it. Eating game seems more humane to me than eating plastic-wrapped meat from the market.

The Archbishop Of Canterbury Reflects On GC2009

At the Archbishop of Canterbury's website, you will find Dr. Rowan Williams' reflections on the recent General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Anaheim, California. Read it and parse it, if you like.

My quick and unofficial reflections (which I may come to regret) follow:

Dr. Williams' response is so very Dr. Williams. He suggests, once again, the two-track system that will reflect the differing paths that members of the Communion may choose with respect to signing on to the Covenant. Of those provinces which choose not to sign the Covenant:

If those who elect this model do not take official roles in the ecumenical interchanges and processes in which the 'covenanted' body participates, this is simply because within these processes there has to be clarity about who has the authority to speak for whom.'

Translation: I wanna be the Anglican pope.

However, a realistic assessment of what Convention has resolved does not suggest that it will repair the broken bridges into the life of other Anglican provinces; very serious anxieties have already been expressed.

TEC needs to get out the tools to begin repairing the broken bridges. What a laugh!

“Whatever the human respect and pastoral sensitivity such persons must be given, their chosen lifestyle is not one that the Church's teaching sanctions.” Therefore, he stated, they should not be ordained priests and especially not bishops.

To teh gays: The Church won't recognize same-sex unions.
Those who are not married to their partners are living in sin.
Those living in sin can't be in leadership positions in the church.

Mind-boggling! Then Dr. Williams should be consistent and defrock those priests in the Church of England living in "their chosen lifestyle".

He throws the word "church" around with such abandon that it's hard to know to which "church" he refers. There is no world-wide Anglican Church.

So much fodder, but how much effort should I devote to this reflection by Dr. Williams?

The Times news story seems to imply that Dr. Williams is a tad, just a tad, unrealistic about the state of the Anglican Communion.

Please Pray

Aitchellsee, who sometimes comments here, writes to ask for prayers for a friend of hers, S., who may suffer from Aspergers. S. had been living with her mother, until her mother died 6 years ago. Now she's having health problems, and her life is deteriorating to the point where it seems she may not be able to live on her own. She's calling on Aitchellsee to help her, and A. wants to help, but S. is quite needy and wants more help than A. feels she is able to give at the present time. The two live about 35 miles away by train from each other.

S. wants A. to visit her, because she feels she might die due to circumstances that seem to A. unlikely to cause death, and she wants to be assured that her parakeets will be taken care of, should she die. A. wants to take another mutual friend along with her to help her assess the situation when she visits, but S. doesn't want the other friend to visit. A. is uncomfortable about visiting S. alone, but she wants to help her long-time friend.

I'm condensing a long email as best I can. In short, please pray that A. finds a way to help S. that she is comfortable with and that S. gets the help she needs.

Lord, have mercy.

Roseann - Recipe And Update

Roseann posted a recipe for a comfort food cauliflower soup, which sounds delicious, and an update on what's happening in her life.

Prayers, love, and blessings to you, Roseann.

Bishop Barbara Harris Preaches At Integrity Eucharist

Ann Fontaine at What the Tide Brings In posted the entire sermon of Bishop Barbara Harris at the Integrity Eucharist. She is wonderful. I could watch her over and over. She's a small woman, but she is a powerful force.

Photo courtesy Susan Russell.

Health Care "Nightmare" In The United States

"Patients without health insurance get dental care at a free clinic in Wise, Virginia, held every July for the past three years. More than 25,000 were treated in a weekend."

From the Observer:

When an insurance firm boss saw a field hospital for the poor in Virginia, he knew he had to speak out. Here, he tells Paul Harris of his fears for Obama's bid to bring about radical change.

It was July 2007 and Potter, a senior executive at giant US healthcare firm Cigna, was visiting relatives in the poverty-ridden mountain districts of northeast Tennessee. He saw an advert in a local paper for a touring free medical clinic at a fairground just across the state border in Wise County, Virginia.

Potter, who had worked at Cigna for 15 years, decided to check it out. What he saw appalled him. Hundreds of desperate people, most without any medical insurance, descended on the clinic from out of the hills. People queued in long lines to have the most basic medical procedures carried out free of charge. Some had driven more than 200 miles from Georgia. Many were treated in the open air. Potter took pictures of patients lying on trolleys on rain-soaked pavements.

For Potter it was a dreadful realisation that healthcare in America had failed millions of poor, sick people and that he, and the industry he worked for, did not care about the human cost of their relentless search for profits. "It was over-powering. It was just more than I could possibly have imagined could be happening in America," he told the Observer.

Potter was an insider, an executive in a high position at Cigna. He knew well the insider workings of the health care company, the tricks to delay, deny coverage, confuse their clients, and dump sick people from their plan. He resigned and began to tell the insider story, which is ugly. The chief focus of the company is on the bottom line and getting money into the pockets of shareholders, rather than arranging for their clients get health care.

Obama, faced with 47 million Americans without health insurance, has put reforming the system at the top of his agenda. If he succeeds, he will have pushed through one of the greatest changes to domestic policy of any president. If he fails, his presidency could be broken before it is even a year old.
....

Obama's plans are now mired and the opponents of reform are winning. The Republican attack machine has cranked into gear, labelling reform as "socialist" and warning ordinary Americans that government bureaucrats, not doctors, will choose their medicines. The bill's opponents say the huge cost can only be paid by massive tax increases on ordinary Americans and that others will have their current healthcare plans taken away. Many centrist Democratic congressmen, wary of their conservative voters, are wavering. The legislation has failed to meet Obama's August deadline and is now delayed until after the summer recess. Many fear that this loss of momentum could kill it altogether.

The "centrist Democratic congressmen", who call themselves Blue Dogs, are not centrists at all. They are conservatives, and for all the good that they do for the Democratic Party, they'd just as well switch over to the Republican Party. My two senators, Vitter-R and Landrieu-D and my representative Melancon-D (two out of the three label themselves Democrats) voted against the anti-torture bill, for crying out loud. Now the Blue Dogs are amongst the crowd who shout the loudest, "What's the hurry to pass health reform"? They're in no hurry. They have good government "socialistic" health care. The health care industry gives them big money. Why the rush?

The healthcare industry generates enormous profits and its top executives have a lavish corporate lifestyle that he once shared. Treating patients for their expensive conditions is bad for business as it reduces the bottom line. Kicking out patients who pursue claims makes perfect economic sense. "It is a system that is rigged against the policyholder," Potter said. The congressional probe found that just three firms had rescinded more than 20,000 policyholders between 2003 and 2007, saving hundreds of millions. "That's a lot of money that will now go towards their profits," Potter said.

A lot of that money also goes into contributions to politicians of both parties - $372m in the past nine years - and in lobbying groups to run TV ads slamming Obama's plans. Many of these ads deploy naked scare tactics. One report said that the industry was spending $1.4m a day on its campaign. In the face of that, it is perhaps no wonder that the Senate has delayed its vote, dealing a massive blow to Obama. "I have seen how the opponents of healthcare reform go to work... they are trying to delay action. They know that if they keep the process going for months, and turn it into a big mess, then the political impetus behind it will lessen," Potter said.

Read all about the so-called "centrist Democratic congressmen" claim to be concerned about spending and deficits that will follow health care reform at Salon, also linked above.

Nobody could be better positioned than the Democrats who call themselves "Blue Dogs" to sabotage healthcare reform, the primary objective of their president and the signature issue of their party for more than 60 years. Thanks to fawning publicity in the mainstream media that persistently describes them as fiscally conservative and ideologically moderate, the Blue Dogs enjoy an almost unassailable position in the middle of Washington's stunted political spectrum.

What supposedly troubles the Blue Dogs these days is the estimated cost of healthcare reform.
....

If the Blue Dogs were truly worried about wasteful spending, they might use their influence to curb the outrageous looting of the federal Treasury by defense contractors, which remains by far the largest drain on the public purse. They might have spoken out against the brazen theft of billions of dollars by private contractors in Iraq, whose thievery harmed troops as well as taxpayers. They might have cautioned against squandering hundreds of billions of dollars on programs that don't work and probably never will, from the F-22 jet fighter to the Ballistic Missile Defense System.
....

Let's recall that the founder of the House Blue Dog caucus -- and still a guiding mentor to its members -- is Billy Tauzin, a Democrat from Louisiana who helped start the group in 1994 and then jumped ship to the Republicans a year later. Just months before he retired from Congress in 2005, he pushed through the Medicare prescription drug bill, guaranteeing hundreds of billions in waste and enormous profits for the drug companies.

As soon as he left Congress, Tauzin became the chief lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, where he makes sure the Blue Dogs never get carried away with any of that rhetoric about fiscal prudence or holding down costs -- by writing generous checks.

Yep. That's our boy Billy, who came from humble surroundings in what we fondly call the "Bay Area" near Thibodaux, the small rural community named Chackbay. He and his fellow Louisianians in the Congress have inhabited the rarefied air in DC so long that they have forgotten what life is like for the the great majority of their constituents.

Bishop Tom Or N. T.?

Adrian at Pluralist Speaks has another wonderful post on Bishop Tom, or Bishop N. T. depending on the audience for whom he writes. It's a thing of beauty, and all is good, because I haven't made a fool of myself in the comments...yet.

I'll quote a few snippets to entice you to visit Adrian's website to read the whole thing.

CN (Interviewer from "Christianity Now"): Bishop Tom. Well let's start there. You are back from yet another trip from the United States.

NTW: I have just been spending some subsequent nights in the same bed as my wife, being safely heterosexual as I am, and I was just reflecting on all the travel I do as a much travelled author with friends around the world. And she is so sweet, saying, as she does to me, "G'night Mr. Tom," because she likes to call me that, as I say, "Goodnight Maggie Thatcher," because of course I need to get some sleep when home - because of all the travel I do - and that thought puts me to sleep.

CN: And combining that with being a diocesan bishop.

NTW: I am just back from America, and I love the American people. They queue up for me to sign the books they buy and they are always so friendly and put their hands deep into their pockets. If I told you everything I said to the people asking me to sign the books I would have to write a book. There is such an enormous amount to give thanks for and for the opportunity that Christianity gives me to travel around the world, and my first love becomes the United States and the American people and their rich and leading traditions of doing theology - thinking of all the great centres and universities where I have never been.

The question below refers to Resolutions D025 and C056 which were passed by both houses of the Episcopal Church at GC2009:

CN: Have they got no case at all: is there not the movement of, er, the Holy Spirit - say?

NTW: I'm a scholar of the Bible, right? Look at it, and the Holy Spirit isn't going to contradict his Bible. It is clear in there: one man, one woman, lifelong, and that's where you do the nookie. You ask the Muslims; ask the Jews. They don't go in for all this variation and postmodern invention, and you ask that Winchester woman because gays aren't even gays anymore, like that chap who was my predecessor. Muhammad, take him: he had only one wife; and Jesus kept himself close to his mum and that other woman. The Jews, they worship their women they do. You don't get David playing cushee with Moshe do you? So where else do you get lots of women using the old tickling stick with other women? Witches round the cauldron, that's where. Paganism. That's where you get all that. All these bloggers you get these days too, from over there, all stirring the heretical brew. Paul saw it, you know, and said they had to stop. It was idolatry, like images and saints and too much holy smoke in amongst all the statues and columns and altars. All that Matthew Fox so-called theology and that Pagan woman, what's she called - Hawkstar. Only in America could you get theology like that, which is why I have to make such an effort to sell them my books. You have to occupy the fulcrum. The Episcopal Church doesn't: it is one big Pagan ethic and a Coven has replaced the Covenant we were all preparing and they've just thrown a brick at it.

Those words appear alongside the picture below. I'm puzzled by the picture. Could the gentleman in the picture be our beloved Prior? And who is the woman? Is this some cherchez la femme kind of joke? Adrian is so very learned and clever, that I don't always "get" his references, which is when I tend to make a fool of myself in his comments.


Please help me solve the puzzle, if you can.

My Turn To Ask For Prayers

Remember my niece, who was diagnosed with breast cancer? She had lymph node surgery, and the biopsy results showed one node positive for metastasis. Now she and her doctors are exploring treatment measures. As I've said before, my mother's family is a cancer nightmare. You name it, and one of the women in the family have had it. My niece's doctor recommended genetic testing for her because of the family history, her mother (my sister) having had both lymphoma, from which she seemed to be cured, and pancreatic cancer, which killed her. The test costs $3200, and my niece waits to see if the insurance company will pay for it. She will need a hysterectomy soon, because the lining of her uterus is not right, and she could be looking at uterine cancer down the road if she does not have the surgery.

Please pray for her and her doctors to make the proper treatment decisions, for the insurance company to make the right decision, and for peace of mind for her and her husband and the rest of the family and friends who love her.

This morning, I found out that my brother-in-law, her father, has a mass on one of his ribs. The doctor said it could be a fatty tumor, a muscle, or a malignancy. Further tests will tell the tale. My BIL recently had surgery for a malignant tumor in the bladder, which the surgeons were able to remove, and he required no further treatment, except close observation for a period.

The latest news about my BIL, which I heard only today, falls in the category of "too much", at least too much for me. The family have bad days, but are generally handling all this bad news with grace, which makes them seem heroic to me, since we are all still grieving for my sister. Today, I am not handling all of it with much grace.

Number 3 prayer request concerns my 9 year old grandson, who has a persistent ear infection, which required a visit to urgent care last night. He seems better today, but pray that the infection goes away completely.

Thank you all. I know what your prayers and good thoughts have done for me and mine in the past, and I'm confident that you will come through for me again

Good news for which we can give thanks from JimB:

Sue-z update (ongoing)...

I saw Sue-z tonight. She is on and off O2. If she is at rest no 02, if she is active she still needs a little. The expectation is that this will pass. Her intervention seems to be fine but they want to track the implant another day to be sure. Everything else is good. The idea is home Sunday or Monday. As very little seems to actually get done on weekends, I am betting Monday but I have been wrong before!