Loving God, the Winter Solstice indicates a growing shadow that many of us find mirrored in our own lives and in the world around us. We long for the birth of the Messiah, once again, in our world, in our hearts.
We are grateful today for Mary and Joseph, courageous parents who helped raise Jesus to be the embodiment of hope for the world.
We thank you for Jesus the child, God-With-Us in a way the world did not expect, shattering equations of authority with power and force.
We pray for the eyes of hearts to be opened so that we might see the birth of the Messiah now, come again in the way we need now. We have learned that you send your love to us in the places we would rather not look, so help us spend a little time on the margins of our lives so that we might be among the first to welcome our expected Savior in this new appearing.
In the name of this mysterious, surprising and entirely familiar Christ we pray,
Amen
jasper is a high school student and member of our saviour, mill valley, where i heard him eloquently participate along the line of the post below regarding the heart of the episcopal church and our place in the anglican communion. i was deeply moved by what he had to say, and by his commitment.
Every year at advent we hear the story of John the Baptist, crying out in the wilderness that something great is coming. We hear also of how crazy he was, how so few people listened, but we know now that he was right. Something wonderful was indeed coming. That something was a someone, Jesus of Nazareth, who would go on to preach a message of love and equality, echoing John’s call to lower every mountain and fill in every valley. We call ourselves Christians because we dedicate ourselves to loving and serving all that God has blessed.
Today, we are that voice in the wilderness, crying out for the earth to be made flat so that every human being may walk on equal ground. We are shunned by “mainstream” Anglicans, cast out by the community that was supposed to be our home. We are told that the split is our doing, that we are to blame for this schism. And in fact, we are. It was our decision to consecrate a gay bishop, to elect a female presiding bishop, and to insist that it is our right to do these things. But let’s be proud of that. Any communion that would not allow us to recognize the equality of God’s children is not a communion we should be a part of.
We see in the stories of Jesus’ ministries to the prisoners, the lepers and the outcasts of society in his day a message that no one is below the love of God. We are all God’s children, and we know that what we do unto the least of the people of God, we do unto God. Every time that we allow an injustice to be perpetrated against a gay man or a lesbian woman, the marginalized of today’s world, we allow the attacker to harm our beloved God, and in our negligence we are guilty. It is not enough to stand on the sidelines, and hope that someday things will be better. We must make our stand for those that society considers “outcasts” if we are to be worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven.
It is not easy to take a stand on so divisive an issue. In our fractured world, I would much rather advocate unity and reconciliation. Only one glance at the newspapers is enough to remind me that this world is defined by East vs. West, Shia vs. Sunni, red vs. blue. I do not want to support splitting the world yet another way. But this is not a division on ethnic, religious or political differences. This is liberty vs. inequality. This is right vs. wrong, and there can be no reconciliation with wrong.
This is not just a struggle for members of the gay and lesbian community. I am not gay, but I owe it to my family members and friends who are gays and lesbians to take a stand. I owe it to the individuals who fought and sacrificed for the Goldberg family during the dark years of Nazism. I owe it to all who have taken stands in the past. I owe it to Jesus himself, who gave everything for each and every one of us.
The wilderness is never an easy place to be, but let us not despair as the Anglican Communion leaves us. Someday, those who understand the absolute equality of human life will be more numerous than the stars. In the meantime, it is up to us to proclaim the bold message of Jesus, Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and Harvey Milk, even if it seems that no one is listening. The Anglican Communion divided will not stand, but the “fierce urgency of now” demands us to stand up. We cannot compromise with what we know is wrong. Forget your fears, disregard the prevailing opinions, remember Christ and join us on the journey to the Mountaintop.
When I was an undergraduate at the University of Tennessee there was a restaurant called “The Bahoo Container.” The interior of the restaurant was light, airy, with high ceilings, clean-lined windows, and beautiful batiked fabric swooping in the space between floor and ceiling.
One day, when Sheila and I were having lunch there, the owner came by the table to see how we were enjoying his restaurant. I asked him about the name, what did it mean? He said, “Everything in the world is held within a container; it matters what the container is. Sometimes we are not aware of this.”
I have never forgotten his words, and have returned to them many times over the years, trying to be aware of the containers in which I exist, the influence they have on my attitudes and perceptions.
The Gospel reading for Third Advent has brought this back to mind for me:
Matthew 11:2-11
When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me."
As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: "What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written,
`See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way before you.'Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he."
This year, for the first time on reading this familiar story, I thought of the container from which John speaks, a prison, and immediately thought of the completely opposite container in which we first meet John – the dark, nurturing womb of Elizabeth.
In the latter, John leaps with joy at the presence of Mary and the Messiah-to-be in her womb. I think now that it is Elizabeth, the living, loving woman who bears John who enables this unthinking joyful reaction to Emmanuel.
And likewise, I think that the questioning response of the prophet John, shut up in an enervating, frightening darkness, the antithesis of the womb.
The container, however, whether womb or prison, while powerful, is not all. As Christians, and as Christians in this season of expectation and hope, we believe that God can lighten any shadow, show up in any cell.
Twenty-seven years ago, in Jerusalem, as Sheila and I were getting ready to go to Ein Kerem, the traditional birthplace of John the Baptist, I found a poem by Thomas Merton on the visitation of Mary to Elizabeth, while both were pregnant. Here is one of the concluding stanzas, that expresses well the sense I have of this One who transforms our containers, transforms our lives with, as John knew, Spirit and Fire:
Night is our diocese and silence is our ministry
Poverty our charity and helplessness our tongue-tied
sermon.
Beyond the scope of sight or sound we dwell upon the air
Seeking the world's gain in an unthinkable experience.
We are exiles in the far end of solitude, living as listeners
With hearts attending to the skies we cannot understand:
Waiting upon the first far drums of Christ the Conqueror,
Planted like sentinels upon the world's frontier.
It was a happy conjunction that on the eve of Reign of Christ Sunday, Sheila and I made our first visit to the San Francisco Opera, to hear Verdi’s “Macbeth.”
First Shakespeare, and then Verdi with his powerful translation of central ideas in the seminal play, and finally this highly intelligent production of the opera, gave me bitter food for thought; bitter, but almost greedily consumed by me, as I continue to struggle with how to be a Christian living in an empire that is showing a frightening reactivity to its dim consciousness of its own increasing weakness.
I will concentrate on a few of the great number of arresting musical and production-based elements that made this “Macbeth” a strong critique of the human lust for power, and the psychological self-deception we practice to cover our own awareness of this otherwise naked desire.
First, the opera opened with Lady Macbeth singing from atop a cube set in the middle of an great space defined by a high curved wall, and a ceiling with a huge, ragged, gaping hole, as from a meteor piercing the vault of heaven. The cube is an abstraction of a castle, a narcissistic personality, the sad prison we create when we give ourselves over to the drive for power. Lady Macbeth moves restlessly over the upper plane of the cube, packing, a caged predator, tethered to the surface by a black rope.
After the murder of the King, Duncan, people and nobility gather in shock bewilderment, and pray to God for a righting of the chaos imposed by the regicide. The voice of Lady Macbeth soars over the chorus, singing the same pleas for divine deliverance from the very deed she had incited her husband to commit.
Similarly, at one point the seemingly mono-focus Lady Macbeth bends piteously over, in prayer, and sings, to a gentle, beatific melody, “The dead have lost their lust for power; give them a requiem and then eternity.” We have been presented in Lady Macbeth a person who has been led into temptation, given over to evil, who yet is aware of her entrapment in the distorting search for dominating power, and who craves release from it.
Finally, after the deaths of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, and the triumphal entry of the boy king, Malcolm, who is welcomed with a stirring chorus, the opera’s director provides us with yet one more critique of our cultural addiction to dominating and being dominated – the soldiers of the hailed boy-king, the savior who they suppose will set things right, goose step their way across the stage. The substitution of one monarch for another is not release, but yet more bondage and deep frustration of the submerged dream of liberty.
I found this production of Verdi’s “Macbeth” helpful as I prepared for my annual discomfort on the Reign of Christ Sunday. Rather than attempt to redefine monarchy in terms of the reality of Christ, would it not be better to turn to another model for human life entirely, one that comes from Christ and is free of the besetting cultural addiction. In this way, the Church may move to become the remnant for “after empire.” We may look to Advent as a manifestation of Jesus’ way, that is not a king’s way, nor a way that can fruitfully be compared to kingship. Rather, it is a way we learn by being fully awake and attentive to his voice.
What is wrong with the proposed Covenant?
Its origins are shallow, being primarily the Windsor Report, and the “recent life of the Instruments of Communion;” that is, rather than drawing upon our scriptural and larger tradition sources, the Covenant is based on a recently prepared report that has immediately gained authoritative status usually only granted documents tested by time, and upon recent experience of a body of leaders of the Communion.
Related to this last point, the Covenant was drafted in response to urgency, a sense of ‘severe strain.” While at times we must recognize genuine emergencies and respond with rapidity, in crafting guidelines intended to direct the inter-life of the vast, sprawling Anglican Communion over time, we should hope for a creative climate of peace, of dynamic shalom, rather than stress and anxiety.
A creation whose origins lie in contention, anxiety, and even, I would venture, implicit violence, will manifest these origins throughout its being. Like a human ego that forms around an early psychic wound, the Covenant that results from origins such as those described above will have a final shape reflecting these originating conditions.
Finally, in terms of a critique of the proposed Covenant document, under part 6, section 5, I think it is an unavoidable interpretation that the draft Covenant makes the Primates the final arbiter in disputed areas. As many have said, such an establishment of a centralized power in the Communion would be a drastic departure from the shape of our historic polity, and one that I think should be resisted.
What would a healthy Covenant look like?
A healthy Covenant would point us to be, at the global level, the embodiment of the teachings in Matthew 25 on recognizing Christ in the dispossessed. The fact that Matthew 25 begins with a cosmic “judgment of the nations” is a setting that should not be forgotten as the dramatic scene unfolds – you might say that the Episcopal Church, for instance, is called by Christ to recognize his presence in the Church of Nigeria, despite our differences (and without erasing those differences as they negatively affect the lives of others). Can we learn to recognized Christ in cultural expressions very different from our own? Can we learn to see the image of God in not only individuals who come from different parts of the Communion, but also in the whole community these individuals represent?
You might challenge the idea of the Episcopal Church, or the Church of Nigeria, as representing the dispossessed. Here I think we must seek to understand the real meaning of “poverty of spirit” that some follower of the Way added to extend, and deepen, to express the meaning intended by Jesus of Nazareth when he said, “Blessed are the poor.” This teaching of Christ guides us to seek the “God center” in all, as my late spiritual director did so beautifully. I take this “all” to mean not only individuals, but communities and cultures as well, with their differences that can challenge our sense of right and wrong.
One of the greatest challenges in this apprehension of the spirit of Christ in all is, as I indicated above, not confusing acceptance and love with the smoothing over of injustice for the sake of getting along. The “third way of Jesus” is not simple, it demands that we become fully human, differentiated in the moral dimension from many of our brother and sister species on the Earth.
Sticking with the Jesus of Matthew’s gospel, a healthy Covenant would also direct us to baptize and make disciples of all nations. I would translate this into being Christians in the world in such a way that people are enabled to let go of ways of life that damage and destroy the creatures of God, and from the point of new birth, open a path into conformity with the image of God planted in them.
Recognizing the God center in all; enabling people to enter new life; and walking with others towards the full Image of Christ – this is the Covenant I would choose.
posted by sean mcconnell
On Sunday, July 22nd, my six-year-old son and I went to hear Bishop Marc preach at Grace Cathedral. It was our way to honor his first year as Bishop of California. There was unfortunately very little mention of the anniversary, but Bishop Marc preached an amazing sermon that cracked open a quote from Paul that I've always found to be really obtuse. You can hear this sermon at www.gracecathedral.org.
Guest blog by Jennifer Morazes
So much has happened this summer that it is difficult to process. Despite my intentions to write about my experiences and thoughts sequentially, my external communication has been stifled. Perhaps this stifling has been the result of a feeling I have experienced that, having worked both on the national and international level for ten years in the areas of homelessness, trauma/violence and resource distribution, I can no longer compartmentalize what I witness both nationally and internationally. However, expressing this synthesis becomes difficult in words and conceptually, as – especially as Americans – we tend to struggle with the question of "Who is my neighbor?" and we are very protective of the boundaries we form in answering this question.
Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation was born at a time when, as Americans, we felt vulnerable. Yet, in the vulnerability of 9/11, some Americans felt compelled to reinvigorate conversations about authentic and just relationships internationally. We recognized that, despite our best efforts, we cannot exist without others. We are (like others in the world) also at risk, but in this recognition comes the hope of partnership and relationship, an acknowledgement of our humanity.
No where has our vulnerability as a nation been more plain to me than in my trip to the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. The reality of New Orleans is that while the risk we experienced from 9/11 was "external", the errors in New Orleans were human and domestic. New Orleans has been most affected not by the natural effects of Hurricane's Katrina and Rita, but by miscalculation, by ignoring the levee weaknesses prior to the hurricanes. And, if we seek to quibble about whether this was in fact "error", there can be no mistake that true neglect has affected residents since then. Here in the United States, it is important to honestly know that it was only three months ago that electricity and water was restored to parts the Lower Ninth, and the local public school is scheduled to open in August - two years after the levees broke!
In working with an area summer camp, it was apparent that in spite of the care and concern and investment of their parents and community, the kids are behind - at crucial development periods educationally. Many of the local men actively seek work but are not finding work, and overall people seek shelter, food, comfort - the most basic and Biblical needs! The scar and badge of the area is signified by the mark upon house after house by the Guardsmen who, after the searches, marked the house as searched with the number found dead. This image - which is actually a Cross on its side - is a reminder that as a nation and people, we are not far removed from two years ago, and we are all commended to invest in our neighbor in the Coastal region.
Some may debate the priority of investing in vulnerable communities locally or donating to projects globally. However, in reality, there is no "either-or." As Americans, we must realize that our commitments lie with our brothers and sisters in the Gulf Coast just as they do in the Philippines, or Tanzania. If 9/11 or the levees breaking has taught us anything, it is that we must disregard artificial boundaries and see the common thread which weaves us together. Having worked alongside students in Southern Africa through the Anglican Students Federation, I can honestly say that many of the concerns of the students there were similar to those of the residents of Louisiana currently – economic investment, just resource distribution, and recognition of the collective strength and capital of those who have been disenfranchised. This national experience can help provide us with a small window into the daily experiences of others in other countries and their challenges for basic needs.
After returning from my trip to New Orleans, I participated in a class offered at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific taught by Dr. Sheila Andrus. Again, I witnessed many connections forming which replace some of these either-or divides, especially in regards to the environment. The air people breathe is literally influenced by the practices of adjoining countries. So, as we affect the health of people in Canada through our practices, we also breathe the air from China and are affected by their practices. We share air, we share water, and ultimately we all share responsibility. Along the lines of health care practices, the most effective measures employed in countries such as Haiti to administer medication –such as providing people transportation to their medical appointments and training peers in the community to teach about the medications – are very similar to assertive practices employed in community mental health settings to aid homeless people with mental illness and people with HIV in the United States. Sharing these models is also part of our collective responsibility.
My
entrance into this conversation, admittedly, straddles this
local-global connection in a vivid way. My father was drafted in the
Vietnam War and suffered trauma as a result of his service. At one
period, he was homeless on the street like many Vietnam War veterans.
This is a story of local-global misconnection – a story which
exemplifies a distorted relationship based upon violence, violence in
which no one wins. Through my own vulnerability and the struggles
which ensued from this experience, I seek to identify and form models
of hope and partnership, rather than those based upon violence and
power misused.
Perhaps the most important lesson we can learn as Americans is to offer non-intrusive support to our international neighbors. In 2003, I had the privilege of attending the Anglican Students' Federation of Southern Africa's yearly conference. I was inspired by the work of then student organizer Francisco Zandamela in his conviction that international ties must be formed around concerns such as viable economic solutions and HIV. The conference title was "Transforming Victims into Victors" and the point was that our call in our histories – personal, interpersonal, communal, even international – is not to be victimized by the past or what we may see as "failures." Instead, the process of identifying both the stones and seeds in our own hearts provides us with the potential for how we ALL can engage in the process of transforming our histories, through the promise of Christ, into victories.
Francisco almost single-handedly organized a conference for young adults on HIV, a very important conference for this very at risk population in Southern Africa. Through the conference, many young people were inspired to get tested and to change behaviors that may put them at risk. Another inspiring piece of the conference for me was seeing connections formed from people from very different parts of the world. For me, Francisco's life, which ended tragically in a car crash six-months later, was a testament to John's truth: Those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. Our relationship to others and ourselves is a reflection upon our relationship to the Divine. I expect there are local leaders like Francisco emerging to engage the issues confronting the Gulf Coast.
I learned from Francisco in Southern Africa, I learned from residents in the Lower Ninth Ward, and I learn from those confronting homeless daily in the United States. Simply put, we all breathe the same air, we are each other's neighbor, and we all through our actions have the capacity to transform the crosses of suffering to those of resurrection. The ripple effects of our own everyday actions prove that our choices and the choices of others can no longer be considered in isolation. From what we buy, to what we breathe, our impact, OUR COMMUNITY, and OUR NEIGHBOR, extends from ourselves - globally. There is no longer a separation.
Jennifer Morazes, M.Div.
MSW/PhD Student
School of Social Welfare
University of California, Berkeley
Last evening, Sheila, Chloe’, and I got to catch up with two friends from pilgrimages we have taken in the past: Andrew Easton and Zara Renander. Andrew is here doing a pre-med internship at St. Luke’s Hospital, about to return to Sewanee where he is a senior.
Zara is the director of a center for Pilgrimage and Reconciliation that has been the recipient of a Trinity grant for the last three years. She has remarkable insights into pilgrimage, and thus, you might also expect, into the human soul. It is always inspiring to be with her for us.
Over these last few years of her work in pilgrimage, she has done some consulting with Trinity Parish, the source of the funding grant. There was great interest in responding to the huge number of visitors who now come to St. Paul’s Chapel, part of Trinity parish, that sits right across the street from the site of the World Trade Towers destroyed on September 11, 2001. Huge numbers of visitors, Zara properly calls them pilgrims, come to the chapel every day. The leadership of the parish has been seeking to know how best to respond to them, and the conversation with Zara was part of that prayerful seeking.
In the course of telling us about this, Zara related this marvelous story: Why wasn’t St. Paul’s Chapel damaged by the maelstrom of the towers’ collapse? Not a window was broken, or a chandelier crystal, while across the street all was chaos. I had never thought to ask how that could be. Zara said that a great, ancient tree, standing in front of the chapel, took the brunt of the destructive force. Perhaps as old as the chapel itself, which is the oldest church structure still in use in New York, the tree had shaded people for generations, provided homes for birds and squirrels, and with its great root system a whole unseen micro-ecosystem unseen by humans walking above.
I was very moved by this story. I thought of a little vegetarian restaurant in Berkeley where I sometimes have lunch on my Thursdays at CDSP. In the men’s room there is a funny, and yet meaningful poster that shows drawings of various animals used for human food, with a caption that says, “They pray for us.”
Now I am reading the Romans 8 passage slightly differently than I have in the past:
19For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; 23and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
In the past I have thought of creation and we all praying for ourselves. I suppose a typically ego-centric view of it. Now I think of creation praying in agape for us all, the kind of prayer that pours itself out for the life of others.
After a long, anticipated wait, I finally got to visit St. Dorothy's Rest, and during a most important part of their yearly rhythm of life. I have to believe that now is the time when I could have and needed to visit and begin to understand this unique, important part of our Diocesan family.
In addition to the church summer camps that St. Dorothy's runs, quite parallel to those at the Bishop's Ranch (it should be noted that both camping programs are fully subscribed), you might say that the heart of St. Dorothy's is the medical camping programs. In one session, children who either have cancer, or have siblings with cancer, are the campers, and in the second, children who have received transplants are the campers.
Everyone involved in these camps is so evidently full of grace: the campers, the counselors, the nursing staff, the camp administrators, cooks and maintenance staff. I was surrounded, enveloped, floored by the compassion and grace that abounded at St. Dorothy's.
Let me simply sum it up by recounting the morning gathering today: Campers and counselors all standing in a circle, holding onto each other, asked by our chaplain, the Rev. Chip Barker-Larrimore, to name one thing for which each of us is grateful. When two tiny boys, at different points in the circle said, "Scientists," my heart was pierced, but when perhaps the smallest child said, simply, "Life," I was not sure I could trust myself to walk, in all truth. To see so clearly, to say it with such simple honesty, at such a young age, tutored by loss and pain, and also by love - I was overwhelmed.
So, I'll try to be as simple as that little boy. I'm grateful for the graceful human beings at St. Dorothy's and for the hospitality they showed me in allowing me to visit. I will be doing all I can to forward the ministry of this sublime place in the future.
Henry Carse, of St. George's College, Jerusalem, says that the earliest story about the meaning of the Jerusalem Cross is that it is a pilgrim's cross. The central, largest cross, represents the pilgrim, and the four surrounding crosses are smaller as they are community sending forth the pilgrim, standing behind, supporting with prayer.
When the pilgrim reaches the ultimate point of pilgrimage, that source of spiritual meaning for pilgrim's tradition, and turns to make the journey home, the reference of the four smaller crosses changes and becomes the pilgrim community, all those whom the pilgrim has met and with whom her soul has mingled in communion. For me, this is inclusive of the originating community, as, through their prayers, they too were pilgrims, and indeed, in some ways, have the more difficult pilgrimage, unaided by the renewing link to central places of the faith, and only journeying by naked prayer and faith.
After New Orleans, our pilgrim group was plunged into the life of the Taize' Community with about 1,800 other pilgrims, mostly from aged 15 - 30, from many countries and Christian denominations around the world. The national complexion of each week of Taize' from March through November, the period when guests join in the life of the community, varies according to school schedules. Our week had large groups from Sweden, Germany, Finland, Poland, France, Hungary, and the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as smaller groups and individuals from many other countries.
While at Taize' we shared the life of the Taize' brothers, with three periods of prayer each day, Bible introductions and reflections in smaller groups, work for the life of the whole community, meals in common, and workshops led by the brothers, on such topics as seeing icons, and fair trade and micro-credit.
There is a tree near the Taize' church which has become, over the years I've been involved in leading pilgrimages there, our group meeting place for the meals. Over the course of the week our pilgrims brought more and more of their friends to join our little meal for checking in and companionship within the larger community. This year we were joined by Swedes, Americans, French, English, and Poles, among others. The pilgrim community was growing before my eyes, embodying the story of the Jerusalem cross.
The life at Taize' is very simple, and it is a powerful lesson that most pilgrims respond to this simplicity with real happiness. The meals are quite simple, but we relished them. We sat on the floor of the Taize' church for at least three hours of the course of each day, yet there was never a complaint about this; we were too absorbed in the prayer of chant and of silence. Our pilgrims found the work of cleaning toilets, for example, to be something to which they looked forward, done as it was with singing and in community, often involving deep discussions of their life journeys.
Leaving was tearful. Many of the pilgrims expressed their feeling that in the course of a week they had grown very close to so many others, which I attribute to the extreme liminality of Taize', a characteristic of pilgrimages and places of pilgrimage; we were betwixt and between, and thus open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
From Taize' we journeyed to Chartres Cathedral, to visit not only that great pilgrimage destination, but also because of the ancient labyrinth built into the floor of the cathedral, the origin of the Rev. Lauren Artress' incredibly influential work on labyrinths, and the model for not only the two at Grace Cathedral, but uncounted others across the United States and the world. We were blessed to be met at the cathedral by Lauren herself, who gave us a spirited and intelligent introduction to the labyrinth and to the cathedral.
The last evening in France, over a meal at our hotel, we shared our reflections on the pilgrimage. I the pilgrims' stories to be full of courage, awareness, love, and hope for the future. The pilgrims come back with great gifts of the spirit to share in the Diocese of California. I know you will welcome and support their visions as you supported them during the pilgrimage.
