A Sabbatical Outside Church Walls

As Greg Rhodes, our last blogger discussed, we just finished a definite “inside church walls” event in the annual diocesan convention. I agree completely with his assessment of the good of it, of what one sees in it. I chair said convention which is always a daunting task, but one supported by many good people in organizing and in participating. It is an example of discourse that can be wrapped in prayer, and a focus on something other than the strident poles we seem to find in much public discourse today. I came back to the “chair” from four months on sabbatical, truly “Outside Church Walls”, attending Spanish Language School, surfing, traveling to Canterbury, the true heart of Anglicanism of which we are part, but viewing all of this from outside the church. Another activity I had not planned on while on sabbatical was moving, literally, my household from a house, to a condo, downsizing in the process tremendously, and having such a liberating experience for my family and me in the process. One of the interesting things about this however, was the lead up to moving in. For the month or so while we waited for closing and all of that, we found out later that many of the other residents of our new building got wind that “the Bishop” was moving in. There seemed to be a lot of concern, “what would these “religious” people be like?” “Will I have to change my behavior somehow?” “Will they expect us to change.”

What seemed to put all of that to rest was a planned party by the building shortly after we moved in, which I insisted our entire family had to attend. It was two hours of light banter, good food and drink, and most of all, for all of us, the eradication of the abstract, replaced by the real. If the “walls” part of our title divides anything, or represents a divide in anything I am coming to this as the main divide, the difference between the abstract and the real. Way too often, our conversations across the walls are done in the abstract, with lots of assumptions, and far less experience. We need diplomacy both ways, we need to work to have no walls. We are real people, living real lives, placing our hope and future in all kinds of things. We should share those things, face to face. Let’s be real. Lets do what we can to eradicate the abstract, and replace it with the real.

One very “real” thing that binds us today is the crisis and need in the Philippines, a place I have been most blessed to visit and where we have friends. I offer this video as we all search for ways to respond.

Bishop Greg