Bishop Rickel's Blog

Day 2, General Convention 2009, July 8th

Dear Ones,

Well, as you can see this is a report on the day that has come and gone!  Mine started with a 7 a.m. meeting and ended with me falling in bed at about 11:15 p.m.!  First legislative day.  Nothing really stunning yet.  Hearings and committees are still getting things out of committee.  Our international visitors were with us on this day including the Archbishop of Canterbury.  He presented at a Forum entitled Christian Faithfulness in the Global Economic Crisis along with three panelists domestic and international.  I hope to write more about this later! 

I was blessed to be asked to introduce this evening and the Presiding Bishop.  And now off to another day in which I hope to do better reporting.  Sadly, in the midst of this day I found out the Rev. Michael Wyatt had died in Seattle.  All arrangements will be sent out when I have them.   Please pray for him, and his family. 

Blessings,

Greg

Day 1, General Convention 2009, Anaheim, July 7, 2009

Dear Ones,

Things are gearing up today, registrations, nametags, finding our rooms, etc.  First full day is tomorrow! Weather is beautiful today.  Interestingly, just across town the Michael Jackson Memorial Service occurred today.  Here, the spirit is good, the family reunion aspect of this gathering is alive and well. My day started with a meeting at 8 a.m. and has just ended, 9:30 p.m.

All participants, House of Deputies and House of Bishops met together today to start our work on the Public Narrative process led by Dr. Marshall Ganns for Harvard Business School.  Before that training both the Presiding Bishop and the President of the House of Deputies spoke.  You can find both speeches on the Episcopal Church website.  In the Presiding Bishop's remarks she used the term "crisis" as her theme.  She said,  "we will be presented with cross-shaped decisions"  and these will make us see there will be no more "business as usual.'  I must say I see those as good things right now.

Before we get too far into this event I wanted to talk about a very important issue that might not get a lot of attention but should: Young people and this convention, or better yet, young people and this Church!  There are just over 30 young people serving as deputies from around our church who are under the age of 30.  One, Katrina Hamilton, ably serves from the Diocese of Olympia.  Some have suggested that, with interest, the fact that not one resolution appeared in the "blue book" regarding young adults.  My first reaction was; YES, because they get it!  We will not solve our problems or change hearts through resolutions.  They seem to get this.  However, it is interesting that youth and young adults was listed as one of five priorities for the 2006-2009 Trieniumm and yet the new budget proposed by Executive Council makes no mention of this.  I am truly worried that when financial crunches come, the youth and young adults are the first to pay.  We seem to want to prop up what still is, to protect those who are "in".  I am worried about that.   But I am not worried about our youth and young adults, however.   The Episcopal Church may lose them when all is said and done, I surely hope not, but I continue to be inspired by their faith even in the face of all of that. 

First, a link to the Young Adult Festival at General Convention. 

Tracking the Young Adult Festival: http://episcopalcommons.org/yaf/    At this site you can track young adults experiences of and responses to General Convention.

Second, I serve on the Stewardship and Development Legislative Committee.  Tonight, at our first hearing, a young deputy from Massachusetts, Sam Gould stood before us in his bermuda shorts and his coat and tie and spoke so eloquently about the MDGs and his trip to El Salvador and his realization of all he takes for granted and the belief he has that this Church can change the world, and we should be about it. 

And finally, for our very own diocese, a direct example, I print below the sermon given by Evan Walker, soon to be college freshman and member of Church of the Good Shepherd, Vancouver, Washington.  To give a bit of context, this was 6 Day, a yearly gathering of our youth 9-12 grades, and the theme was the Gospel According to Dr. Seuss.  The day Evan preached was the last night, Christmas Eve! as we were studying that day, "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." 

Preached by Evan Walker

“When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to

Bethlehem

and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.  When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.”

            These shepherds were pretty much amped, stoaked, and so very excited about what miraculous thing they had just witnessed.  We too, are witnesses here at 6-day to Jesus and God, not only in infant form, but in the Eucharists, healing services, small groups, and He certainly comes to us through fellow attendees and staff. 

            This spirit that comes to us these six days is what makes this place so unique and so heartwarming.  In fact, I almost wasn’t going to come due to financial issues and work; but, the spirit of 6-day is what made me beg my parents incessantly and has guided me here.  And I hope that this spirit of love and friendship and experience is not only in me and wanted by me, but I hope this spirit of Jesus is in all of you and that it guides you all to love 6-day and hold it in a special place in your hearts.  I come to 6-day for this spirit because I feel like it’s the only place for this kind of experience.  It’s like going to Starbucks for a white chocolate mocha with a shot of caramel or Coldstone creamery to get cake batter ice cream with cookie dough on a hot summer night.  Six day is a place, one of the most perfect of places for me to experience the spirit of God.  And it’s from this camp that I get a sort of pit stop with God from the interesting and testing times of high school and life. 

            Six day is a place for me to regroup, take a look at my life, and focus again on God and his place in my life. I’ll be going to college next year and I’m hoping that this oasis from home will help keep me on the right path as I start to live my life on my own.  I hope that you all have been able to find or managed to see your own way back onto the beaten path through 6-day.  I hope you all are able to take away something from this week, anything, whether it be an idea, stronger faith, a new friend, anything. 

            The shepherds on that lonely night in

Bethlehem

took wonders with them.  They took faith in a baby, a Savior, and proclaimed the good news of great joy.  This new led sight and faith of the Child was a magnificent gift for the shepherds.  We too are given a gift here at 6-day.  We are given the gifts of community, fellowship, love, and so much more.  This gift is not only ours to cherish here, but also to cherish outside the borders of

Camp

Huston

and in our lives.  So take what is given to you here and share it with others; your family, your friends, your co-workers, whomever.  I believe that the real meaning of 6-day is within each of us, it is what we make of it.  Six day is the experience of taking your problems, your fears, your doubts, your happiness, your faith, who you are, and sharing it here with everyone else who is bringing the same sorts of things with them.  Six day is the chance to come out of your “cool shell” and to become more a part of the Body of Christ.  I think that we are all able to trust each other and talk about our lives here because Christ is definitely residing with us.  This community has indeed helped me to get through my own personal problems and that’s part of the reason why I love this community.  The activities that we’re able to experience here help to construct and create an environment for hopefully most everyone who walks past the entrance gate and that they can fit in here and hear the good news of great joy.  I know that there are many different types of people here who are living very different lives and backgrounds, but God brought his own Son to earth that night in the lonely town of Bethlehem, and he came to grow up and make friends with and healed the crippled, the poor, the weak, the tax collectors, the prostitutes.  He called them as He calls us now.  Six day I hope is a special thing to each and every one of your lives, whether it be great or small, I hope you can truly be yourself here and find yourself, as there are many great kids and staff.  Now, since it is Christmas today, we are to act as the shepherds did, and spread the news.  This doesn’t mean convert everyone you happen to meet, but if you can be the light to others, as Jesus is to us, then I think you’re on it.  Or if you’re busy with your recently bought 8 gig iPod touch, or Xbox 360, or girls, or boys, or job, just don’t forget to leave out that great gift that was given in that little town of Bethlehem.  Don’t shut out that light nor become blinded to it.  I think that that’s the light that keeps this community a flame.  So don’t be afraid to go brag to your friends or family when you get home, be like the shepherds and help spread this great awesome new of great joy of your experiences here at 6-day and with Christ."

As I said, I am worried that our Church not show this the importance it should and that because of that we may lose a generation, or more, but I am not worried about our young people.

Blessings,

+Greg

The Eve of General Convention 2009

Dear Ones,

My family and I are on the Coast Starlight Amtrak train making our way toward Anaheim.  After a beautiful first day and a restful night we are in Oakland and about to hit the stretch where we ride along the Pacific Ocean before we come into LA tonight.  I have a somewhat balanced feel as we make our way toward GC: between the great excitement this "family reunion" can always cause and the great desire for it all to be over.  I am going to try mightily to live in the first.  In the Diocese of Olympia we have a most skilled, dedicated, and joyful deputation.  I look forward to being with them soon.   On this blog it is my hope to post daily, much as I did from Lambeth.  I hope I can live up to that.  This is the first such post, and I thought I would reprint below my article in The Voice for this month which relates to this very event, a bet on friendship.   Keep praying.  

Blessings,

+Greg

Dear Ones,

 

Since being elected your diocesan bishop I have really relished looking back at past bishop’s history and writing.  Bishop Stephen Bayne, the third bishop of Olympia, of note wrote prolifically both as bishop here and also as the first Executive Officer for the Anglican Communion.  Elizabeth Garlich recently gave me two full boxes of history and memorabilia from the Bayne era.  It was quite interesting.  I took it to our archivist Diane Wells.  Some of it I am still going through.  In one of those boxes was an article entitled “A Bet on Friendship.”

 

In this article Bishop Bayne attempts to explain General Convention; how it works, who will be there.  But more than that, he takes the reader underneath General Convention.  Instead of “nuts and bolts” he tries to point out why this gathering is so uniquely Anglican.  He writes, “It is really an Anglican characteristic to expect a very high degree of individual, self-reliant initiative and responsibility.  We do as little as we can to coddle one another and we ask very much of one another.  We are this way because we believe God is this way toward us.  It would be silly boasting to claim this sense of responsible freedom as an Anglican possession.  It would be as silly to feel that we lived up to it very well.  We don’t claim it as a jewel of our own.  We simply have come to feel that God doesn’t want to deal with humanity as if we were kindergarten children, and that therefore the Church must be willing to show the same confidence in its members.”

 

This has been my experience of the event known as General Convention.  I learned for the first time that, other than the government of India, our General Convention is the largest parliamentary body in the world.   That, in and of itself, is not necessarily something to be proud of, but it does seem to point to the desire for vast representation, and a willingness, or at least a wish, to hear others, to be the wider Church, in one place, even if only every three years.  Lambeth, the gathering of bishops from around the Anglican Communion held last summer,  is another such event and chance at that, held every ten years, and I must say that experience did shape me, that brief moment in time; being the wider Church in one place.   In such situations one cannot hold so readily to the provincial notions that are so easily held when we are merely local. 

 

My good friend and author Greg Garrett recently wrote his thoughts on General Convention.  He wrote of a time in 1982 when he interviewed the then relatively new and unknown rock band U2.  He found out in his interview that just a few short months before the band had almost broken up, over, surprisingly to him questions of theology and Christian practice, essentially the question, “how should Christian life be lived and why?”  They disagreed on this, vehemently, but decided finally that they could accomplish more good together than apart and so as they say, the rest is history. 

 

I think Bishop Bayne and U2 are onto the same thing really.  Bayne finished his article about General Convention with these words, “The Anglican way of life-the Prayer Book way of life-is the most amazing bet on responsible freedom I know.  It is a bet very often lost.  But I judge from the Cross that God is still willing to make it, in His dealings with us.  Therefore, it is inconceivable that we should not share it, or should try to abdicate the mature and responsible humanness to which the Cross pleads.  Therefore, it is uncomfortable to be an Anglican.  I do not look forward to General Convention with any easy expectations of neat solutions or comfortable decisions or great wisdom or extraordinary sanctity.  Most of us will be no better than we ought to be, and probably not as sensible.  But we will be greatly helped by two things: the fact that humankind can’t ever quite forget how strong an itch for responsible freedom there is in his bones; and the fact that God made us to be His friends and not His dolls. Given these certainties, and the patient impatience or the impatient patience which Christians try to show to one another, the bet doesn’t seem so wildly ridiculous after all.”  Or as U2 put it so well some years later, “We get to carry each other.”  Indeed…a bet on friendship. 

 

Faithfully,

 

Greg Rickel