July 16: Celebration

Dear People of Christ Church,

This week, my family and I are spending the week at the Barbara C Harris Camp, our diocesan summer camp (named for Barbara Harris, a bishop in our diocese and the first female bishop in the Anglican Communion) . Noah and I are chaplains, and Isaiah is along for the ride (literally, since I’ve been carrying him around in a little front pack for much of the time). We work on worship--preaching and celebrating the Eucharist—and with the kids’ Bible study and activities. Yesterday I went along with a group of 11 and 12 year olds to beginner horseback riding lessons—church camp is not about church EVERY second, after all. And Isaiah loves the attention from the “big” kids. So we are having a good week.

Last Sunday, we had a great time with Cameron’s baptism and the blessing of our new sprinkler and flowers. We recited parts of a song from St Francis of Assisi, the Canticle of the Sun. We prayed in memory of those who died this year, in thanksgiving for those who gave to fund it, and to the glory of God. Our sexton, Gary, came and gave us a demonstration of the sprinklers, too. Special thanks go to him and to Marcia Luce, who spearheaded the project and was still putting finishing touches on the flowers over the weekend. And thanks to all the team of “Mighty Gardeners” who will continue to weed and maintain all summer! You can see pictures of the event on our website, www.christchurchwaltham.org.

On the other side of the ocean, the bishops of the Anglican Communion begin meeting today for the Lambeth Conference, which takes place in England every ten years. I hope you’ll keep the bishops in your prayers this week. Pray for Archbishop Rowan Williams, who presides over the conference and is, I believe, doing his best to keep us all together. The fact that no one (myself included) seems entirely happy with his decisions tells me that he must be doing a good job. Please also pray for Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. He was not invited to the conference itself, but has still traveled to England to meet people and try to have some kind of dialogue. Bishop Robinson just wants to be a bishop—not the “gay bishop,” not a troublemaker, just a pastor to his people. At one event, he took questions and said that he wished everyone could come visit him in his diocese where, he said, “90 percent of the time” he is performing diocesan tasks and can often be found “in a church basement with a macaroni salad.”

While it is true that our Church faces some serious challenges, parishes across the globe are staying faithful to their ministries and trying to seek and serve Christ in the people around them. It might seem odd to bless things like a boiler (as we did last year) or a sprinkler system like we did on Sunday. I think, though, that we have to take all the opportunities we can to celebrate what we have and what we are doing together. Tragedy makes room for itself—it squeezes in and derails our predictable wants. But we have to pay more attention to those times for celebration. They can too easily dart by us before we realize.

So Gene Robinson eats his pasta salad, and we bless our flowers, and the kids at camp sing to Jesus with guitars and drums and hand motions, and the church moves forward.
Thanks be to God.