felix hominum

St John's Shaughnessy will vote on staying in Anglican Church of Canada

Related post here.  I have a few longtime friends at SJS.  I'm hoping to talk with them for a bit over the weekend.  While from one point of view there will be some cheering, this morning's daily office had this in it:  "For as long as there is jealousy and quarrelling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?" 

Update:  results of their vote is here, along with a few links.

Members of St. John's Shaughnessy Anglican Church, a neo-Gothic landmark in the heart of the city's wealthiest neighbourhood, are gathering for an expected vote on breaking with Vancouver-area Bishop Michael Ingham over the issue of same-sex blessings and trying to take the church property with them.

Ingham has warned St. John's Shaughnessy that what it is considering is "schismatic." If members of the large parish at the corner of Granville and Nanton try operating under the authority of a South American Anglican bishop or anyone else, Ingham said, they will not be legally able to hold onto the church property.

From the Victoria Times Colonist

St John's Shaughnessy parish website

New Westminster diocesan website has an excerpts from Bishop Ingham's letter to parishes:

“Any attempt to betray that trust through schismatic action is a ground for immediate termination of license or removal from office, and may well subject those same individuals to civil proceedings also,” he wrote.

The letter was directed to clergy, wardens, and trustees of St. John’s Shaughnessy, Church of the Good Shepherd, and St. Matthias/St. Luke, all in Vancouver, and to St. Matthew’s Abbotsford.

The four parishes are listed on the website of the Anglican Network in Canada as being member parishes. Leaders of the Network are engaged in establishing a separate Church in Canada under the jurisdiction of an Anglican Church in South America, the Province of the Southern Cone.

Bishop Ingham’s letter followed a similar epistle issued by a neighbouring bishop, James Cowan, who is Bishop of British Columbia, which covers Vancouver Island. On January 30, Bishop Cowan sent a letter to all his parishes, also warning any attempt to transfer episcopal and synod jurisdiction to another Anglican Province.

Both bishops wrote that if a resolution to leave the diocese came before any parish’s annual meeting, the chair of the meeting is obliged to rule it out of order as “ultra vires”–beyond the powers of any parish or congregation.

“There may be clergy and laity who, in good conscience, feel they can no longer remain members of the Diocese of New Westminster or the Anglican Church of Canada. Resignation of office and the seeking of a spiritual home elsewhere is the honourable and appropriate course of action for such persons,” wrote Bishop Ingham, echoing a similar passage in Bishop Cowan’s earlier letter.

list of candidates announced for next bishop of Edmonton

The Search committee has posted the names of the candidates for the upcoming episcopal election for the next Bishop of Edmonton on the diocesan website:

The Rev. Wendy AINSWORTH
The Very Rev. Dr. Jane ALEXANDER
The Rt. Rev. David ASHDOWN
The Ven. Edward KING
The Rev. Darcey LAZERTE
The Rev. Dr. Mervyn MERCER
The Very Rev. Peter WALL

I've met 6 (I think) of the candidates.

There is a provision in the process for additional names to be added up to 72 hours prior to the beginning of the electoral synod.

Over the next little while we will be looking at the various documents we've been asked to consider as we discern who is called to be our next bishop.  Understanding the vocation of a bishop is key to helping us discern the person called to that office.  In the meantime, it would be appropriate to uphold all these people in prayer.  It is probably not an easy thing to discern whether to let one's name stand. 

While we are first and foremost called to pray for discernment, the diocesan committee will also be posting information on the candidates, as well as their responses to a series of questions.  As a delegate to the synod, I will be looking at those responses when they are available.

I would like to remind us that each of these persons holds an office of leadership within our church.  No doubt, there will be initial preferences among various the members of our diocese as to whom they think is best suited to be our next bishop, and whom they think is not so called.  Such a situation is unavoidable.  It is particularly acute at this time in the life of our church. However, we are called to follow advice which St Paul himself heeded and quoted:  "You shall not speak evil of a leader of my people."  Look it up (Acts 23 et al).  That sentiment will be the guiding policy for any discussion (and comments) here at felix hominum in the upcoming weeks.

Click here for the Episcopal election post series

Don't forget that soon we will be descending into Hell.

Update:  since I'm going to be away from the blog for much of the day, and to avoid any possibility of having to check comments as they come in, I'm going to close off the comments here for a while.  The pancake mix is calling.

thoughts on the end of week of prayer for Christian unity

This Sunday marks the end of yet another 'Week of Prayer for Christian Unity'? No doubt this past week has been filled with ecumenical services around the world as different Christian traditions (denominations) join together in worship of our Lord.

I must admit that I find much of what goes on during this week somewhat trite. It's almost as if we're saying to the world, "Look at us! We're holding hands, singing the same hymns, and worshipping the same way for this one service. See, we're united!

from a priest in Labrador

book review: God on Mute: Engaging the silence of unanswered prayer II

Last week I spent 3 days on a silent retreat with a group of local clergy.  This is an annual event;  it's been a January tradition to bundle up, head out to the Star of the North Retreat Center, and spend a few days in prayer, reading, listening, and fellowship.

As it was a silent retreat, I thought it only fitting to take along Pete Greig's "God on Mute:  Engaging the Silence of Unanswered Prayer".  I started the book a few days prior to the retreat, and thought it would be a good book to read at that particular place, at that particular time.

It was seven years ago, during the annual silent retreat, that I received a message to call home.  We were expecting our second child.  AK had gone to the clinic for a routine ultrasound (as if seeing into the womb can possibly be routine!).  Sarah Joy was suffering from congestive heart failure in utero.  There could be any number of causes.  We'd like to do more tests.  Would you like to schedule a termination of the pregnancy?  We'd like you to speak with the geneticist.  Pete Grieg's book tries to give people a way forward when God is silent.  Not when God says "no" to our prayers, but when God decides to take his time in giving us the answer, when he is silent for a moment. 

The overall pattern of the book is a journey through the last days of Jesus' earthly life.  We walk with Jesus on Maundy Thursday.  If there was ever an "unanswered" prayer, it is surely Jesus' prayer that we might be one.  Jesus' prayer in the garden is often a model for our own.  We pray with Jesus that cups might be taken away from us, and yet so often it seems that is the only draught God offers.  Not my will, but yours.

On Good Friday we are God-forsaken.  Jesus' cry of abandonment from the Cross becomes our own - why, why, why, have you forsaken me.  In this section Greig tries to work through some of the "why" questions.  Why does the world seem to work the way it does?  Why is my prayer not being answered?  What are the ways in which these questions have been answered by Christians, and how can a deeper understanding of God's will, God's world and God's work help us through our personal "Good Friday" prayers.  In this section he takes us through the series of simpler answers which we might be accustomed to.  I have heard many of those same answers from well meaning friends and strangers.  I think my favorite was the plea to "Just pray Jabez" and SJ would be healed.  But while those answers which Greig enumerates can and do have their place, I am glad that he takes us to Holy Saturday.

In our fear of unknowing, we leapfrog Holy Saturday and rush the resurrection.  We race disconcerted to make meaning and find beauty where there simply is none.  Yet.

This is the real place of struggle for unanswered prayers.  The time when God truly is silent.  Greig's observation is true - we want to hurry through Holy Saturday to Easter.  It is a day of silence.  Yet, we are reminded: though God is silent, He is not absent.  This is the deeper place of Christian trust, when we have to say "into your hands I commend my spirit".  It is the place of trusting in God's presence with us when all signs of his presence have vanished.  Too often we try to rush others through this day as well.  Or we try to fill the void with something of our own creation.  I think of how we like to fill hospital rooms with chatter and stuff, when sometimes our mere presence is what is needed.  Not our voice.

Then Greig points us to the Resurrection - the place where all prayer is answered.  The book is seasoned with his own experiences of struggling with "unanswered prayer".  And at the end he gives a bit of a guided resource for reflection which can be used alone or in groups.  The book is a good antidote to overly triumphalist Christianity, and it addresses a concern that many Christians have, but which often (I have found) they are not very willing to admit.  After all, what kind of Christian is ignored by God?  This book is food for thought and prayer for all of us who have wondered why God doesn't answer... I'd give it 8 out of 10.

related post:  God on Mute

God On Mute: Engaging The Silence Of Unanswered Prayer

Pete Greig recounts the scene from Narnia where Digory asks the Lion for the magic fruit, knowing it will cure his mother.  There is a secret hope that the Lion will immediately say "yes", and a dreadful fear that he will "no".  Instead, as Grieg reminds us, the Lion says neither. 

He is silent...

Many of us will have had those times when there was neither a clear yes or no.  There was silence.  I recall a time some years ago when there were numerous people praying for our daughter, SJ.  At one point I idly figured out (our minds turn to such things at such times) that there were people in over a dozen countries on 3 continents all praying for one particular person.  It seems out prayers can, at times, hit the ceiling and bounce back down.  There are times when we do not hear an answer.  We may want to shout back:  take your own advice - "say either yes or no", but say something, lest I be tempted to spit you out of my mouth.

It is the kind of struggle which we all to often keep to ourselves.  Perhaps we will be accused of "not having enough faith", or "not praying persistently", or not doing it "the right way."  If you have ever felt God was simply silent, well, you are not alone.  This is a difficult topic, and as I make my way through the book, I hope that Greig offers something for us to hope on.

The weekend's reading: 
God On Mute: Engaging The Silence Of Unanswered Prayer
Pete Greig

Update:  review now posted here.

Robert Crouse on Prayer

And so, as a pilgrim who travels along a road he has not been on before believes each building seen in the distance is the inn, and finding it not so directs his belief to the next, and so from house to house, until at last he finds the inn; just so our soul, as soon as it enters upon the new and unfamiliar road of this life, directs its eyes towards the end, the highest good, and each thing it sees which manifests some good, it takes to be that end.

And because its knowledge is at first imperfect, inexperienced and untaught, little goods seem great to it, and thus it begins its longing first with them. Thus, we see the infant intensely longing for an apple; and then, later on, for a little bird; and then, still further on, fine clothes; and then a horse; and then a mistress; then modest riches; then more; and then still more. And that is because in none of these things does it find that for which it ever seeks, and it believes to find it further on.

Prayer is the interpretation, the articulation of all this desire: the soul's ceaseless desire for God; and prayer is therefore, indeed, as George Herbert describes it, "soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage." Indeed, the desire is itself the substance of the prayer, as St. Augustine remarks in one of his sermons: "Desire itself prays, even if the tongue be still. If you always desire, always you pray. When does prayer sleep? Only when desire grows cold."

full text here (MS Word doc):

Heavenly Avarice

via the best little anglican church website in canada

The Throne of Love

A meditation for Holy Cross Day

"We venerate the cross as a safeguard of faith, as the strengthening of hope and the throne of love. It is the sign of mercy, the proof of forgiveness, the vehicle of grace and the banner of peace. We venerate the cross, because it has broken down our pride, shattered our envy, redeemed our sin and atoned for our punishment.

"The cross of Christ is the door to heaven, the key to paradise, the downfall of the devil, the uplifting of mankind, the consolation of our imprisonment, the  prize for our freedom. The cross was the hope of the patriarchs, the promise of the prophets, the triumph of kings and the ministry of priests. Tyrants are convicted by the cross and the mighty ones defeated, it lifts up the miserable and honors the poor. The cross is the end of darkness, the spreading of light, the flight of death, the ship of life and the kingdom of salvation.

"Whatever we accomplish for God, whatever we succeed and hope for, is the fruit of our veneration of  the cross. By the cross Christ draws everything to him. It is the kingdom of the Father, the scepter of the Son and the seal of the Holy Spirit, a witness to the total Trinity."

Rupert, Abbot of Deutz, early 12th century

the parish blog of St. Timothy

will be found over here.  In theory, it will be part of the online presence of St. Timothy's Anglican church, with much inspiring stuff, relevant and up to date information for parishioners & links to the local Anglican community.

Or it might gather dust.  We'll see.

Lord, hear our

prayer

remnants: byzantine monastery

Byzantine era monatery ruins

Mount Tabor