Luminous Darkness

…and Ruler of the house of Israel, who didst appear unto Moses in the burning bush, and gavest him the law in Sinai: come to redeem us with outstretched arm!

…that comest out of the mouth of the Most High, that reachest from one end [of the heavens] to another, and dost mightily and sweetly order all things: come to teach us the way of prudence!

Some interesting news out of Botswana today. Apparently there was an article stating that the diocese had passed a vote of no confidence in their bishop, but a letter from the Diocesan Secretary states that this is in fact not true. Although the discussion of another bishop holding meetings within Botswana without consent is of concern from an ecclesiological point of view, to me the more interesting quote backs of what I have believed about many Anglicans in Africa for some time:

…the Bishop still stands by his position that Africa has too many problems (poverty, HIV and AIDS, poor governance, unemployment, etc) to sort out than to spend a lot of time and energy on homosexuality issues, which do not impact on the day-to-day lives of many struggling African people.

I have heard this point of view expressed by others I have met at international events in the past, and I feel strongly that it relates pretty closely to my own views on the issue as well.

Thanks to my friend Jen for pointing out FreeRice.com, a website where you can build your vocabulary and, with each word you correctly define, allow the website to donate ten grains of rice to help end world hunger. How cool is that! The test is adaptive, so you are actually learning new words and constantly being challenged out on the edge of your vocabulary.

Thanks to Jeremy Bonner, I have learned that the convention actually needed to pass Resolution 1 by a 2/3 majority, not a simple majority. So, in fact, the whole process passed by only one (lay) vote! Fascinating to think that it was actually that close. I have been able to correct this entry.  In fact, a simple majority is all that is necessary in the canons of the diocese, as he points out in his amended article.  His whole article is actually quite a good summary of what went on at the meetings today.

The Diocese of Pittsburgh voted just now to leave the Episcopal Church, not in so many words, but that is the spirit of Resolution 1 at the Diocesan Convention. The Resolution says several things, but the most important points are that the Diocese of Pittsburgh is free to choose its own Provincial alignment by canon and that it may contain parishes outside its historical geographic boundaries. The majority was not staggering, but in the lay order was approximately 66% in favor and 33% against and in the clerical order, 82% in favor and 18% against. The Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan, bishop, in his address to the convention said the following to ‘moderates’, those who have not made up their mind as to which side of the debate they are on:

To the still undecided or “torn” deputies in this Annual Convention I would offer one thought. The matter finally comes down to an unavoidable choice between cultures. There is the culture of the wider Episcopal Church: theologically innovative, at the edge of mainstream Christianity, secularly attuned, declining, canonically fundamentalist, and ready to sue or depose to obtain its way. By contrast, there is the culture of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh: Scripturally centered, critiquing the secular agenda, among the fastest (and few) growing dioceses of the Episcopal Church (relative to population decline), focused on congregational mission, allowing vast freedoms in the form and manner of ministry. Given that we must choose – and I do believe that national actions have now dictated that we must – which is the predominant culture we desire individually and corporately to embrace: national Church or local diocese?

He goes on to add what some of the results of his resolution passing would be:

If Resolution One passes, our work in the year ahead would likely include determination of the Province with which the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh might re-align, development of acceptable options available to minority congregations, and negotiation, both nationally and with plaintiffs locally, about a mediated alternative to continuing or escalating litigation.

I will add more details later, but, for now, it seems that things are going to change here permanently, although it should be noted that this would not take effect unless the same resolution was passed again at the convention in 2008.

Unusually, my travels have taken me to a second World Heritage site in less than a month. I have been in Nashville for a few weeks and have had a great time here exploring the city and listening to lots of live music in the bars and honkeytonks downtown, and had a good day on Saturday driving up through Kentucky to visit the Woodford Reserve whiskey distillery and Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace. However, the highlight of the weekend was definitely my visit to Mammoth Cave National Park. Mammoth is the largest cave system discovered in the world, with over 365 miles of mapped caves, and many more that have not yet been explored. I took two tours, one that was about four-and-a-half hours long and another that was two hours long. Both were interesting and very different, and I was fascinated to see the beauty in the cave in a number of different ways, from enormous caverns to tiny cracks and passages. Words really cannot describe what it like to be in those ancient places and spend several hours walking underground in an environment that spends much of its time in perpetual darkness and silence. Definitely food for thought.

Since becoming a Companion to the Oratory of the Good Shepherd, one of the ways that I am living out the required Rule of Life is by saying the Daily Office of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer (or at least Compline if I do not get back early enough in the evening). I have found it to be an extremely valuable discipline, and one that puts focus to my life that is usually busy and filled with many other things. I’m certainly not perfect at saying it every day, but I do make a pretty significant attempt, and that is rewarding as well.

There is a great post over at the Daily Episcopalian asking why at least one Episcopal Church in most major locations around the country couldn’t offer this as a congregational service. As someone who travels about seventy-five percent of the time to different parts of the United States, I know well the frustration of trying to locate a church that offers regular public worship services of any kind. The author of the article also makes the good point that most weekday services are offered at times when working people would not be able to attend. Whilst I have no problem with saying the Office by myself, having the option to say it within the context of a a worshiping community would be something that I would definitely make an effort to attend.

Perhaps ought to mention this to my own rector…

Since I am clearly a bit behind with this blog, I shall make no apologies, but will just try and get on with things. The most recent bit of reportable news is that I have added another UNESCO World Heritage Site to my list. I was working for a few weeks in the western part of North Carolina last month, only about a three-hour drive from Great Smoky Mountains National Park, so I decided to spend a weekend there.

I arrived on Friday afternoon and drove up to my hotel in Gatlinburg, TN (a fascinatingly garish tourist mecca about which much could be written) through the park from south to north. This took me past a number of very beautiful views of the mountains themselves and I stopped several times along the road, including once to see a small black bear cub walking around on the hillside. By the time I got to Clingmans Dome, the tallest point in the park (and therefore also usually the most tourist-filled) it had started to rain quite heavily, and by the time I parked it was a complete downpour. Having a fairly good sense that this was likely to be a short term rain shower, I waited in the car and said Evening Prayer whilst watching people run back to their cars. By the time I was done, the rain was also done, and I headed up to the top.

It is quite a climb, although not too long of one, to get to the top, but the view is spectacular and very worth it. This is in spite of the fact that pollution and smog have made the views much less stunning than they once were (as a number of National Park Service notices explained in great detail). Oddly, the rain seemed to have dampened people’s enthusiasm for the climb since I was actually up on the observation deck for about ten minutes completely by myself which I would guess is fairly unusual for the height of the tourist season.

After this I headed to my hotel and planned my hike for the next day. My good friend Eric is currently finishing up a through-hike of the Appalachian Trail, and so had been through the park a few months before. He had given me the suggestion of a fairly good day-hike with a good climb at the beginning meaning most tourists wouldn’t try it, but not too long that someone like me who doesn’t hike all the time would get totally exhausted. It started out at the Cades Cove Picnic Area, headed up to the AT, went along that trail for a few miles, and then circled back to the Cove for a total distance of about fourteen miles.

On the way up it was extremely humid and I was soaked to the skin within an hour with my glasses fogged up so that I could barely see. However, the views were wonderful and, after I left the river behind, the silence was almost total other than occasional animal noises. I do believe that I saw a pair of either bears or hogs (which are apparently just as big as bears according to the Park Service trail runner I met) in the woods only about an hundred feet off the trail, but the mist was very thick at that point and they raced off as soon as I got near to them.

Coming back down after lunch it was much less humid and the sun actually came out a bit. Overall the hike was beautiful and gave me a definite sense of peace and serenity, as well as isolation since I only saw about ten other people on the trails during the course of the entire day. I would definitely go back since I barely scratched the surface of what there is to see, and I would highly recommend the park to anyone.

After last night’s experiment in live blogging, a first for me, I have to say that I was generally pleased at the results. Although I was not chatting with a lot of people in real time during the course of the meeting, I do think that I gave a pretty fair sense of how it went. I want to take a few minutes here to reflect on what happened at the meeting, and in the ensuing conversation out on the sidewalk afterwards, which is, as usual in these cases, much more interesting than what was said inside!

I think that in general the meeting accomplished two things. First, it allowed a number of people from within District VII of the Diocese of Pittsburgh to speak to the leadership of the diocese and express their views. These are mostly, although not all, those who are in the minority in this particular diocese, meaning that they generally agree with the direction that The Episcopal Church has take in recent years, and would like to remain full members. Although as I said during the event, this was a bit frustrating for someone such as myself who has heard these arguments before many, many times and have learned that they are unlikely to convince anyone to change their views, nevertheless I must acknowledge the very real pain felt by many who were present. I am glad that they had the chance to express their views.

The second thing that happened at the meeting is that we were given a clearer understanding of the direction that the diocese is considering moving. Although the secular, legal aspects of the lawsuit involving Calvary Church and the diocese are not moving in a direction that the diocese would prefer, it is clear that they are not yet willing to back down. The idea of leaving all of the property and endowments of each parish and simply ‘going away’ was mentioned by Bishop Scriven, but probably, as Harold Lewis pointed out to me afterwards, only as an option that though a technical possibility, was not really likely to happen in reality.

With the move towards “leaving the Episcopal Church” that was stated in the document I quoted in an earlier post, it is clear that some sort of plan has begun to emerge about the direction that they think the diocese needs to move. The insistence from the panel that they do not have any real idea what that direction might be is, frankly, hard to fathom. If it was discussed, and in fact, as was stated, if the pros and cons of each of the proposed ideas was discussed, there must have been some talk about what a possible future could look like. For me, the reluctance of those involved to inform us either about the content of this ‘pro and con’ discussion or about what they see specifically as the future of the diocese is a signal to me that something is in the works.

The conclusion is that Diocesan Convention will have to make some sort of decision at its next meeting, but if my reading of the history of this diocese is accurate, that will be far more likely to be a tacit approval of a previously planned idea, rather than a real discussion of what the possibilities might be. Although I generally consider myself a centrist, my experience in this diocese is that they tend to simply play by the idea that the ends justify the means. On the one hand, they say that the Primates of the Anglican Communion have the right to interfere with dioceses of the Episcopal Church, but on the other hand they say that the General Convention of the Episcopal Church has no right to interfere with the Diocese of Pittsburgh.

What they are saying, really, is that since they are right anything that they need to do to move the Church in the direction that they want must also be right. Please go back and re-read my quote from St. Basil the Great below — what a sorry place for the Church to be in.