July 23, 2008

Well I started the day by locking myself out of my room before Eucharist, so I went off to church hoping to get a key when I returned. The Eucharist was led by the Iglesia Episcopal de Cuba with other Spanish speaking bishops. Bishop Miguel Tamayo of Uruguay led the singing and he was so full of the Spirit that we all sang joyfully even at 7:15am! (and in Spanish too!) I couldn’t face one more line up for food so I came back to Darwin to get a key to let me back in and to have breakfast in my little kitchen. The kitchen overlooks the rose garden which has every colour of rose you could think of! It was a lovely quiet time.

Bible Study is wonderful. This morning it was John 8:1-20. The first focus was, “Verse 12 is pivotal, connecting the two sections. How does Jesus’ declaration that he is “the light of the world” – using the ‘I am’ formula – speak to each of these sections?” We got into questions of how we make judgments that give opportunity for new life rather than death, how do we take time before making decisions (writing in the dust) and how does the light shine on all our sins, not just those of the ‘accused’. The member of our group from Egypt shared an interesting bit from the Middle East where it is sometimes suggested that Jesus is writing the names of the accusers in the dust and they think he knows they have been involved with adultery! The second question was “What does it mean in our Anglican Communion to judge in the light that brings life, not death?” Part of our discussion was filmed for the Daily Journal, so we are waiting to see ourselves as film personalities tomorrow after we return from Tea with the Queen!

The Indaba group today was called “Transforming Society – the Bishop and Social Justice. We had the Millenium development Goals as a focus and a short DVD of Helen Wangusa (the Anglican Observer at the United Nations) talking about how much or little progress has been made on each goal as we move toward 2015. It was the best session of this sort we have had so far. This is a place where almost all of us agree that we can work together from the context of the Gospel to transform the world. We wrote a piece that I hope will become a statement from Lambeth listing the work that the Communion is already doing to move us toward reaching the MDGs by 2015.

After lunch we had a “Hearing”. The Windsor Continuation Group has prepared a page of their thinking about work that is still to be done to follow up from the Windsor Report.
We had the opportunity to tell them what we thought of it! There some positive comments, lots of questions, and some critique. The process seems to be that they take the input and make revisions about where we are going, bring it back in written form by Sunday and then we get another go at it next week. They hope to have to guide to direct future work before we leave here.

For the self select session today, I chose the one on listening when the topic or the person is difficult. Who would have thought that bishops would have such situations?! The leaders were Janet Marshall and Bishop Trevor Mwamba from Botswana. About 16 of us participated. Janet and Trevor come from clearly different settings and their input complimented each other beautifully. We had some practice at listening to each other and we shared some difficult situations. Everyone found it a very useful event. We are so fortunate to have Janet as a resource in our Diocese.

I went to the Marketplace to see what I could find and had great fun helping a bishop from the Congo choose a purple cassock and cincture band at Wippell’s. The salesman saw my name tag and asked if I knew St. James’ Church, Armdale, where they had installed stained glass window! Then he asked about Hantsport! The Anglican world is really quite small.

Tonight I went to a reception by Ripon College. That is the College that hosted the Women in Leadership event. It was fun to see a few of the students I had met at the college and to see how wide spread are the graduates of a small but mighty college. They offer opportunities for one term or one year exchanges that I think we will investigate.

Tomorrow the coaches pick us up at 7am to take us off to London. The walk will take us to Lambeth Palace where we have a visit and lunch. Then off to Buckingham Palace! I hope I do more than frighten a little mouse under a chair!