I'm Leaving On A Jet Plane

First I'm going to New York City, and then I'll go by train to visit my friends in Connecticut. I'll wave good-bye to her husband before he leaves to drive down to Louisiana to do fall fishing with Grandpère and my son. My friend belongs to a choral group that is quite serious about practices, so she can't miss. Instead of traveling to Louisiana with her husband, she invited me to visit her in Connecticut. That sounded good to me. GP and I were in their wedding many years ago, but we moved and lost touch with each other for a long spell, and then I found them several years ago through the internet. We've kept in touch and visited back and forth since then.

In truth, I'd just as soon be out of the way of the testosterone-driven fish stories and expressions of dismay about the stock market. Plus, I hope to see fall color while I'm in Connecticut. I'll spend a few days with my friend, and then I'll head to beautiful midtown Manhattan and around and about in New York City for a few days.




I love New York, I do. Apparently Robert Indiana's LOVE sculpture is all over the place. The New Orleans Museum of Art has a copy of it in the sculpture garden. According to Wiki, "The original Love outside sculpture, created in 1970 of cor-ten steel, stands in the sculpture garden at the Indianapolis Museum of Art."

I won't have a computer with me, so there will be little or no blogging while I'm gone. I'll turn off the comment function before I leave tomorrow.

See y'all when I get back.

Meet "Her Holiness"

This past weekend, our friend, Ann Fontaine, attended the diocesan convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Wyoming. I don't normally link to Stand Firm, but this nugget was too good to pass by. In the discussion about the convention at the blog, this comment appeared:

Why is it that no one from Dio Wyoming is EVER quoted except Ms Fontaine, the unelected Pope of that diocese,

From now on, you will please address Ann as "Your Holiness" and when you speak about her, you will say "Her Holiness". Respect due.

Good News For The Episcopal Church

From the AP:

The Supreme Court won't get involved in a dispute between breakaway Episcopalians and their former national church over who owns a California church and its property.

The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from the St. James Anglican Church in the Diocese of Los Angeles. It is one of several dozen individual parishes and four dioceses nationwide that voted to split from the national church after the 2003 consecration of the first openly gay Episcopal bishop in New Hampshire.

California courts have ruled that, while St. James had the right to split off from the larger church, the congregation could not take parish property with it, even though the parish has held the deed to the church for decades.

I did not think that the Supremes would want to take up the California case. On the other hand, what's the next step now for TEC in South Carolina?

Story Of The Day - Bittersweet

She said she usually cried at least once
each day not because she was sad, but
because the world was so beautiful &
life was so short.

From StoryPeople.

I can't let this one pass without commentary, because, in one sense, it is true, but in another sense, I think it's better to live in the present, whether in sad times or happy times, and not pine because life is short. That seems to me a waste of precious time. Then, too, I have great hope that this life is not the end.

Guess Who

From T'Bogg:

Let's not kid ourselves. Anyone with the bare minimum requirement of one honest bone in their body knows that Snowbilly Virginia Woolfkiller did not spend the past four months holed up in an igloo of her own furiously typing up her memoirs.

The man has a way with snarky words, don't he?

Thought For The Day

There's a vast difference between faith that God exists and trusting God to catch us when we go over the cliff.

Then Again, Maybe Not

From Bishop Michael Smith's blog on August 2, 2009, in reference to the possibility that a diocese or a congregation may adopt the first three sections of the Ridley-Cambridge Draft of the Anglican Covenant, which, the bishop notes, have already been approved by the Anglican Consultative Council:

A diocesan convention could adopt the Covenant. That diocese’s bishop would then be recognized by the Archbishop of Canterbury as “in communion” with him.

A congregation in a non-Covenant diocese could adopt the Covenant and request of the diocesan bishop an “Episcopal Visitor” from among those bishops recognized by the Archbishop as being “in communion” with the See of Canterbury.

An individual in a non-Covenant congregation in a non-Covenant diocese could simply have his or her “letter” moved to or baptism recorded in a Covenanted-congregation.

Or, perhaps the Communion Partners initiative could become a “Mission Society” or a “Christian Community” as described in Canon III.14.2(a) as “a society of Christians (in Communion with the See of Canterbury)…”

Then again, maybe not. Referencing a Sept. 28 letter to the Rt. Rev. John W. Howe, Bishop of Central Florida, from Archbishop Rowan Williams The Living Church says:

“As a matter of constitutional fact, the [Anglican Consultative Council] can only offer the covenant for ‘adoption’ to its own constituent bodies (the provinces),” the archbishop noted. But “I see no objection to a diocese resolving less formally on an ‘endorsement’ of the covenant.” Such an action may not have an immediate “institutional effect” but “would be a clear declaration of intent to live within the agreed terms of the Communion’s life and so would undoubtedly positively affect a diocese’s pastoral and sacramental relations” with the wider Communion, he said.

A diocese, congregation, or individual may endorse, approve of, really, really like the covenant, but they may not adopt the covenant. Only at the level of the province is adoption of the covenant possible.

Bishop Smith also says:

The General Convention of The Episcopal Church and the Archbishop of Canterbury are moving in different directions. How’s that for the understatement of the year?

There are those who think that it's possible that the Episcopal Church will adopt the covenant, depending on the completion of Part 4. Bishop Smith and many amongst us may yet be in for a surprise. I hope that TEC does not adopt it, but others think it could happen.

Bishop Smith is bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of North Dakota and one the seven bishops from the Episcopal Church who recently visited with Archbishop Rowan Williams. He is also a candidate for bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana.

"Pellucid Prose"

Tobias Haller at In A Godward Direction posted The Coinherent Bishop, which title I misread at first. Surely you can understand why. Switch around a few letters in "coinherent", and you will be reminded of someone many of us know and love, (because Jesus says we must). Here's a teaser for you:

Certainly we've had enough of incoherent bishops of late, from the abreactions of Durham to the megalomania of Pittsburgh, as well as somewhat less than pellucid prose from the chair of Augustine.

Good, no? However, Tobias' post, which concerns the ministry of bishops in the church, is quite serious and well worth reading.

Should I Have A Spiritual Director?

Not since the days of my youth, when I was rather seriously afflicted with a case of scruples for a good many years, a malady not uncommon to Roman Catholic youth, have I had anything resembling spiritual direction. Perhaps, the youth of other denominations suffered from scruples, too, but mine was a predominantly Roman Catholic world, so I can't speak with any authority of other denominations. The "sins" about which I worried that I was losing my soul were trivia. I'd give you examples, but they're far too embarrassing.

Certain of my "sins" had to do with "impure thoughts", which the nuns regularly warned us against, however they never spelled out examples of "impure thoughts", I assume because to explain them would be embarrassing, plus the nuns and the students would have to think the "impure thoughts", and, lest we all fall into sin by lingering on the thoughts, we'd be bound to immediately wrest our minds away from them. All was therefore left vague, which meant that those of us of a scrupulous inclination were left with a large and fertile orchard from which to pluck the forbidden fruit of "impure thoughts" which we were absolutely forbidden to think. There's nothing like repression to lead to obsession!

My cure from scruples came when I was in college, when the Jesuit philosophy professor who was counseling me told me that if I had any doubt whatsoever as to whether something was a sin, I should consider it not a sin. I believed him and followed his advice, and, before long, I was cured. Back then, I thought that if a priest told me to do something, it was always the right thing to do, which makes me thankful that I was never around sexually abusive priests, but in the case of the scruples, the advice worked.

The priest who helped me before the philosophy professor was a professor of theology, a kind and caring man, but he became ill and went into a mental institution. I sometimes wondered if listening to my petty worries about trivia (which were not trivial or petty to me) and those of other students like me (he attracted the woebegone like flypaper attracts flies) finally sent him over the edge. That was another addition to my pile of scruples. Was it partially my fault that he became ill?

I don't even know if the sessions with the priests over my scruples count as spiritual direction or would rather be considered spiritual counseling, because I haven't regularly had anything that I could call spiritual direction since then. I suppose that having passed the three-quarter century mark of years on this earth that it's a little late to be wondering if I need a spiritual director. I suspect that I may be too headstrong and rebellious to take spiritual direction, and the thought of putting my spiritual life in the hands of another human being is quite scary to me.

So what do you think? Should most Christians have a spiritual director?

"The Archbishop Of Anglicanism Shows His Garden"

From Adrian at Pluralist Speaks:

The Archbishop of Anglicanism, the Most Rev. Rowan Tree, today took some seven bishops from across the world through his palace garden. He was leading them up the garden path, being particularly proud of his diocesan borders, where flowers and plants are named after bishops and dioceses.

Read the rest at Adrian's blog.

I've already warned him that if he continues with this sort of wickedness, his computer will be taken away, but he won't listen.