Saint Francis House

The bishops elected and the deputies confirmed the election of the Rt. Rev. Katherine Jefferts Schori, bishop of Nevada, as the XXVIth presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church yesterday.  Nobody was expecting this!  But the excitement around Columbus Convention Center was palpable.  One bishop, grinning like the cat that swallowed the canary, said “Do you know what we did?  This is going to shake up the church!”  Another said, “I just voted for the best qualified nominee.”

Presiding bishops are not saviors.  No bishops, no leaders are saviors.  What Ella Baker said of the Civil Rights movement is true also of the Church:  “We need movement centered leaders, not leader centered movements.”  But there is just a chance that Jefferts Schori, as a highly educated and well-regarded woman — the folks in Navaholand think she’s attentive to their needs! — can avoid some of the pusillanimity of white male bishops with regard to the Anglican Communion.  The Franciscans have already begun to pray for her, and I hope everyone else will, too.

None of this changes what I think is happening in the Episcopal Church.  The split is there already, it’s real, and the only question is, will the disciples who dwell in this venue focus on discipleship rather than trying, like Humpty Dumpty, to put their shells together again?  The danger, of course, is that the Church has once again put a woman in charge just at the moment the institution is collapsing, so that we can blame the woman for it.

Today is the seventh day of the fast for me.  I’ll break my fast ronight, and head back to New London tomorrow.  St. Francis House beckons.  As Ed Rodman says, “Let there be peace among us, and let us not be instruments of our own oppression.”

In Groton, Conn., today, the US Navy will launch — “christen” — the third of its Virginia class submarines, the USS Hawaii. Many of my friends will be there and some will be arrested for trying to interfere with the Empire’s war machine.

Meanwhile, in Columbus, Ohio, the Episcopalians continue to try to square the circle and stay in the Anglican Communion. Franciscans met in the early afternoon yesterday to talk about the Church and our Franciscan witness at Convention. There were eighteen tertiaries, four First Order brothers, two sisters, and a visitor from a new Third Order group in Virginia unrelated to TSSF. It was a great conversation. Our bishop protector, Gordon Scruton was there, as were Mark McDonald, bishop of Alaska (and soon to be bishop also in Navaholand, where Carol Tookey serves), and Jim Kelsey, bishop of Northern Michigan (the UP, or ‘upper penninsula”) who arranged the meeting. Jim is a Third Order novice and bishop protector of the Community of St. Francis (First Order sisters). Also Nedi Rivera, suffragan bishop in Seattle, who is an associate. Good conversation about where the Orders are and where we’re going. A strong desire was expressed to step into “Franciscan insecurity” by taking risks in community and ministry. Very heartening.

At our Bible reflection last night, Terry Rogers, Carol Tookey and I read Matthew 16:21-28, the first prediction of the Passion and the cost of discipleship. I was moved to apply Jesus words, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt. 16:24) to the Episcopal Church. We often apply it to ourselves as individuals and reflect on “the cost of discipleship.” But might the institution also be called to “deny itself”? What is “the cross” that the institution must bear in order faithfully to “follow Jesus”?

As I said yesterday, I think the split in the Church has already happened and the Convention is simply trying to continue to march, like a soldier in the field, without noticing it has lost some limbs and is bleeding to death. But what if this “death” is in fact the crucifixion of the Church? Should we not, like Jesus, embrace God’s call to sacrifice, die to self, and be available to God’s Holy Spirit for resurrection in some new, now unimaginable form? Death is a difficult and often violent process, but so it birth!

There is a movement around, on the Internet and probably beyond, called “the emerging” or “emergent church.” It’s a postmodern movement among evangelicals who are alive to 21st century issues but want to be the body of Christ in their time and place. I don’t know much about the movement, but the name intrigues me. What is emerging? Could it be that there will emerge from the collapse of the modern institution — the Episcopal Church and all the others — a new, participatory, less hierarchical, more communal set of groupings of disciples? I find it salutary to reflect that there were 126 years between the council of Nicaea (325) and the council of Chalcedon (451). What might that mean for us?

We are here in Columbus, fasting and praying for the Church, to offer Francis’ charisms of poverty and joy as a “model” of “being church” to our fellow Christians, sister and brother Episcopalians. Is that “model” like the emerging church?  What will the “new church” have to say about fast attack submarines?  Will it be more exercised about the war on the poor than people’s sexual orientations?
I don’t know what the “new thing” is or will look like. But I am quite sure that God is “doing a new thing.” Stay tuned.

Emmett Jarrett, TSSF

The split in the Episcopal Church/Anglican Communion — Church folk call it “schism,” which is a heavy-duty word for Christians — has already happened.  The Convention in Columbus will probably once again “paper over” the split, but that will only delay the inevitable.  I come to this conclusion by listening to people here in Columbus and drawing the conclusions only a few are willing, as yet, to draw.

My friend Ed Rodman has a position paper that tells the story from the progressive side.  The Anglican Communion’s “Windsor Report” asked the Episcopal Church to “repent” of its actions at the 2003 Convention, chiefly confirming the election of openly gay bishop Gene Robinson in New Hampshire and acknowledging that “gay unions” are taking place in the church, refrain from consecrating any more openly gay bishops, and await a world-wide consensus on sexuality issues.  Rodman suggests that the Episcopal Church needs to repent of militarism, racism, complicity in the American Empire’s world dominance and war on the poor, but not for “belief in the dignity of every human being and equal treatment for all God’s children.”  That’s not the kind of position that is negotiable or subject to compromise.  Neither is the position of more conservative Episcopalians.  They believe the Episcopal Church’s actions have “departed from Scripture and historic Anglican traditions,” that the Church itself is in a state of apostasy from the Christian faith.  How can one compromise with apostasy?

The general tone here is serious, and mainline Anglicans are trying very hard to paper over the differences.  There’s a lot of paper!  But both progressives and conservatives believe they are guided by the Holy Spirit, and unless God has taken to contradicting himself, they can’t both be right.  (Maybe neither is right?)

After the hearing on Wednesday night, when both Gene Robinson and Bob Duncan (Pittsburg bishop who leads the conservatives) spoke, I wondered to myself, “Which of these people do I NOT want to see at the table in the banquet in the Kingdom of God?”  But it seems the conservatives think the liberals are damned already, and the liberals don’t believe in damnation except in the here and now.  I wondered yesterday if there isn’t a “third way” for the Church.  Today I don’t think there is, at least not for the institutional structures that have existed throughout my lifetime.

Maybe the Spirit is leading Christians into a new way of living together, or apart.  Maybe “poverty and joy” — the Franciscan charisms that we are fasting and praying for — are not consistent with institutional survival.  Perhaps the kingdom Jesus looked for is arriving at last, raising its banner amidst the ruins of institutional Christianity.

I hope this sounds hopeful, because hope — a gift of God, not human optimism — is what I’m feeling this morning in Columbus.

Second report from the Episcopal Church General Convention in Columbus, Ohio.  Things are fairly calm, discussion and debate very civil.  Perhaps that’s a good sign.  At an open hearing on the Church’s response to “the Windsor Report” — an intervention by international Anglicans concerned with the Episcopal Church’s (and the Anglican Church of Canada’s) actions around consecration of an openly gay bishop and blessing of same-sex unions — speakers could be found in three “places.”  Some feel the Church has “departed from Scripture” and lost its Anglican identity.  Some feel that “full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons” is a mandate of the Gospel and the Church should get on with this prophetic work no matter what others think.  And many — perhaps a majority — are trying to craft language that keeps the Church in the Anglican fold — a very loose fold at best — and let’s people do what they want.

What is new, to me, is a growing realization that we can’t have it both ways.  So the question becomes:  Does the Church split — go into schism — worse than heresy to Anglicans generally? or is there a “third way,” not a compromise of anybody’s principles, but a nonviolent approach to Church life that reflects the nonviolent “third way” of Jesus:  nonviolence.  I believe there must be such a way, because I believe the Spirit moves like the wind, without our knowing where it comes from or where it is going.  Certainly the Episcopal Church right now doesn’t know where it’s going.  How can we see that as a good thing?

This from Daniel Berrigan, SJ, I find salutary:

“One is called to live nonviolently, even if the social or political change one worked for is in fact unlikely or even impossible.  It may or may not be possible to turn the U. S. around through nonviolent revolution.  But one thing is in my favor in such an attempt: the total inability of violence, as a social or personal method, to change anything.”

But notice that Dan, who turned 85 this month, is trying to change the Empire, not just a little church!  As St. Francis used to say, “Brothers, let us begin to serve God our Lord, for up till now we have made little or no progress.”

More to come.

Today is the second day of the Episcopal Church’s 75th triennial General Convention.  It’s also the second day of the Franciscan Witness of Prayer and Fasting.  Jesus said of the deaf and dumb demon, “This kind only comes out by prayer and fasting” (Mark 9:29), and I think the demon of not hearing one another and not being able to speak to one another is presently afflicting this clan, which, for better or worse, is my clan.  So I’m here with a number of Franciscan sisters and brothers and we’re fasting and praying for the Spirit to shake the Church and empower it in “poverty and joy” (Franciscan charisms) and help us speak the truth to one another and hear one another and the Lord.  Stay tuned.

Tom Paine wrote during the darkest days of the American Revolution, “there are the times that try men’s souls.”  Last night, the New London City Council voted to begin the process of evicting the remaining home-owners from Fort Trumbull, imposing fines, etc.  Councillor Charles Frink described the action as a moral low-point, trying to secure profit for the City by turning our neighbors out of their homes.  It is the great eminent domain struggle, on the “right” of a municipality to seize people’s private homes and give them to another private entity, which will (they hope) make more money and pay more taxes.  Welcome to New London, where “your house is ours.”  At the same meeting, the Council imposed various rules and restrictions on homeless shelters in the city, which the city does nothing to support.  It is not hard for me to see a relationship between these two actions:  both are a part of the “war against the poor” that the Empire is embarked upon, at home and abroad.

But we have not given up.  These are hard times, but, as Tom Paine said centuries ago, our souls are tried in order to make us stronger in the struggle for justice, freedom, peace and human dignity.  We will not stop working for justice.

There’s a curious phrase at the end of the second Evensong of the Day of Pentecost in the Roman Liturgy of the Hours: “So Eastertide ends.”  I’ve always been touched by the wisdom in the phrase. Easter is eternal, but the season comes to a conclusion until next year.

I celebrated Mass and preached today at Grace Church, Yantic, Conn., and began my sermon with a reflection on Etty Hillesum, a young Dutch Jewish woman who left a journal after she was taken to a concentration camp and killed by the Nazis. She wrote of the “sorrow” she was feeling, sorrow especially at not being able to live out her natural life. She knew she must embrace the sorrow, and make it a part of herself, but not let hatred or the desire for revenge edge out the sorrow. When the sorrow was fully entered into, she said, then she could truly say that “life is beautiful and so rich. So beautiful and so rich that it makes you want to believe in God.” From the depth of her sorrow, she could see the richness and beauty of life, and therefore want to believe in God. It’s the wanting to that strikes me. One has to want to believe.

At the conclusion of this Easter season, as I prepare to plant tomatoes tomorrow and go to Dan Berrigan’s 85th birthday party after our seventh anniversary Fiesta for St. Francis House on Saturday, and then to the Franciscan Witness of Prayer and Fasting at the Episcopal Church’s General Convention in Columbus, Ohio, June 13-21, I think gladly that “Eastertide ends,” once again. Resurrection life goes on. God, please give me and all who read this the courage to embrace our sorrow, realize the beauty and richness of the joy you share with us in Christ, and live Easter lives as long as you give us to live.

Today is Memorial Day in the USA. The St. Francis House community prays for the repose of the souls of all who have died in our country’s many wars, and that no one else will have to die in war again.

Today is also the anniversary of the birth of G. K. Chesterton, the great English apologist for Catholic faith, who said, among other things:

“A characteristic of the great saints is their power of levity. Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.”

Today also I meditated on the following verse from the Bhagavad Gita:

Knowledge means humility,

sincerity, nonviolence, patience,

honesty, reverence for one’s teacher,

purity, stability, self-restraint….

The word translated “nonviolence” is ahimsa; I think the word translated “self-restraint” in the fourth line is swaraj. Gandhi’s commentary on this verse of the Thirteenth Teaching of the Gita is this:

From chapter thirteen begins a new subject. It discusses the body and its nature….

Pandavas and Kauravas, that is, divine and demoniacal impulses, were righting in this body, and God was watching the fight from a distance. Please do not believe that this is the history of a battle which took place on a little field near Hastinapur. The war is still going on. This is the verse we should keep in mind in order to understand the meaning of the phrase dharmakshetra, field of duty [in the Gita’s first verse]. . . .

Our bodily life will have been lived to some purpose if it is spent in thinking which of these two [the Field or the Knower of the Field] we should serve and which we should go to for refuge.

Gandhi, The Bhagavad Gita according to Gandhi, p. 182.

I must see my own life in this light. My body, my physical, psychic, emotional existence, is the “field” on which the battle takes place for my soul. The Pandavas and Kauravas are what Ignatius of Loyola called “good and evil spirits,” contending for my soul. Like Arjuna, I resist taking up the battle, I would remain in sloth and indecision. But Christ — Krishna in the Gita — bids me “take up the cross,” engage in the struggle, and win the victory over self.

The discipleship journey of a Christian is like Arjuna’s struggle. It is a struggle with oneself, an inner conflict. And we win the victory of life by winning a victory over self. One of the Scriptures Francis turned to way this: “If any one would come after [Jesus], let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.”

That’s it for today. God give you peace.

Today is the Seventh Sunday of Easter, the Sunday after Ascension Day. It is Day Three of the nine days’ Novena to the Holy Spirit. As the Spirit was poured out upon the first disciples nine days after the ascension of Jesus, so we pray the Spirit may anoint us at St. Francis House “to preach good news to the poor, . . . to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, [and] to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:18-19, cf. Isaiah 61:1-2).

Fr. Emmett Jarrett, TSSF, will be going with a group of Anglican Third Order Franciscans to the Episcopal Church’s General Convention in Columbus, Ohio, June 13-21, to engage in a Franciscan Witness of Prayer and Fasting to invite the Church to a Franciscan “model of being church” in this time of great division and controversy. Emmett will post a daily report of their experiences at the Convention in the “Thoughts” section of the St. Francis House website. You are invited to follow along, and earnestly asked to pray for the Spirit’s guidance, for yourself, for the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion, and St. Francis House.

Today is the Saturday after Ascension Day.  It is the second day of the novena to the Holy Spirit.  Today the St. Francis House community will be on vigil at Union Plaza (Soldiers and Sailors Monument), New London.  Join us to act for peace.