From the Bishop of Wyoming via TitusOneNine:
March 21, 2010
A Report from the House of Bishops, March 22, 2010
Dear Ones,
Greetings from Camp Allen, Navasota, Texas where we are now into our third full day of the House of Bishops meeting, a day of Sabbath on this Sunday. We have done quite a bit already and I wanted to update you on it. I arrived late Thursday evening. We officially began Friday at 3:00 p.m.. I had several meetings scheduled before the actual start. We began with the walkabouts with the 8 candidates for Suffragan Bishop for Federal Ministries. You may remember I have served on the Special Committee appointed by the Presiding Bishop for this election. It is good to see it get to this point. There were 6 candidates which the committee put forward, and two petition candidates. All were excellent. I was grateful for the walkabout as I learned a lot from it, and one candidate did, in fact, emerge for me. We have the election this week on Wednesday.
Saturday, we had the presentation by the Theology Committee and their report "Same Sex Relationships in the Life of the Church." I was a bit disappointed with the report itself, which was really simply two papers, one from the conservative viewpoint, and one from the progressive viewpoint. While they were good papers, the House of Bishops had asked for the committee to prepare "a" paper, not two. I am quite sure this will be published soon, if it is not available already out there somewhere. Still, it did provoke very good discussion, as did the report of the "Around One Table" results. This was a church wide study on the identity of the Episcopal Church. Saturday night were class dinners, and then our Sabbath began.
Sunday was mostly free, with Holy Eucharist at 10 a.m.. You may remember I sing in the choir, and so that was part of the day as well, under the able direction of Dent Davidson, who now lives in Chicago but we will always claim him, and he us. Bishop Rivera sends you all her love! It was great to see her and hug her neck!
Sunday night after dinner we had a fireside chat with the Presiding Bishop. Many topics were covered, and much shared but perhaps the most moving was the talk by Bishop of Haiti, Zache' Duracin, who I am blessed to say is at my table for this triennium. (We are at tables for our meeting, usually made up of five bishops, for the three years between each convention. My table has Bishop Larry Benfield of Arkansas, Bishop-Elect Andrew Waldo of Upper South Carolina, Bishop-Elect Ian Douglas of Connecticut, and Bishop Duracin.
Bishop Duracin shared with our group the day of the earthquake. It was so moving to hear his story. He had just left his car and was in his front yard, when the earthquake struck. He watched his house crumble before his eyes, with his wife and two girls still inside it. The girls came crawling out of the rubble just minutes after, basically unharmed, but his wife, although alive was trapped. Her leg was, and is, severely damaged. She is now under care in Tampa, Florida. He reported that his car, the one he had just left before the earthquake, was only unearthed this past Friday. He is a very grateful man, to be here, but also for all you have done, and many across this church. He is currently planning the reconstruction plans, and I have assured him we want to be part of that. Here is a picture, not the greatest but the best I could do, of him addressing the House during the fireside chat along with his interpreter.
Tomorrow we begin our two days discussing and learning about the Emerging Church. Karen Ward from our diocese arrived tonight with two musicians from COTA in Fremont. Also Stephanie Spellers from The Crossing in Boston, Tom Brackett from the Church Center Staff, and the two keynoters, Phyllis Tickle and Diana Butler-Bass. I will be introducing them all to the House tomorrow.
We also issued a statement regarding the assassination attempt of Bishop Barahona of El Salvador. That is just below.
I will report again at the end our time here.
Blessings to all of you,
+Greg
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