A fiddlehead strikes an episcopal pose. Photo by {link:http://www.flickr.com/photos/princebart/2608626295/}Prince Bart{/link} on Flickr.

This is the second of three articles by the Ven. Dr. Thompson on the orders of ordained ministry—priests, bishops, and deacons. The first installment presented the ordained ministries as refracting the ministries conferred in baptism, then focused on the ministry of priests. Mr. Thompson took up the question of holiness as the promise that “the bare soil is not the last soil and that business as usual…is not the only business afoot.” He then invited readers to understand the community of the baptized as bearing witness to that holiness, and the ministry of priests as nourishing that witness among the baptized. In this installment, we turn to the ministry of bishops and to the episcopal ministry of the baptized.

The bishop is the “celebrity” of the ordained, showing up from time to time in parishes, with accessories unique to the office—mitre, crozier, ring. Because the bishop is less familiar than the parish priest, one might think of him or her as a visitor from head office, causing an interruption in the normal rhythms of a parish community.

But the bishop is more than a head office supervisor, and much more than an interruption. The bishop, like the priest, refracts a dimension of the ministry of the baptized, a dimension that plays a vital part in healthy discipleship. Episcopal ministry, both as exercised through the office of bishop, and as enacted in the community of the baptized, is a ministry of communion, of the unity of the church, and of a common humanity in the image and likeness of God.

Episcopal ministry stretches the community of the baptized beyond what is comfortable and familiar into encounters with the Other who is strange and sometimes frightening. In the discourse of Jesus, the parable of the Good Samaritan is an example of episcopal teaching, a call out beyond tribal and provincial loyalties into the hard work of negotiating a common humanity.

Episcopal ministry calls the community of the baptized to establish communion as a principle of the first order.

In a communiqué at the end of their meeting in Portugal in 2000, the primates of the Anglican Communion asserted that “When we turn away from one another, we turn away from the cross of Jesus.” At a subsequent meeting of the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada, Archbishop Terry Finlay of Toronto made an impassioned plea for the unity of the church, inviting those present to see the arms of Jesus, stretched out on the cross, as arms gathering all people together.

Episcopal ministry, then, is concerned with the unity of the church, and more comprehensively, with human communion. That communion is grounded in the communion of the Trinity, in whose image we are fashioned, not just as individuals, but as persons-in-relationship. That is to say, as persons-in-relationship, we reflect the truth of God the Holy Trinity as persons-in-relationship.

Bearing witness to that truth is not easy, comfortable, or safe. It goes against the grain of tribalism to acknowledge a common humanity, especially in the face of profound diversity, divergence, and conflict among tribes, cultures, and peoples. Within Anglicanism, diversity was, for a long while, submerged by the assertion of English cultural and tribal practices as universally normative. Especially in light of the global prevalence of the cadences and idioms of the Book of Common Prayer, “sameness” took the place of unity.

In the past half-century, the Anglican Communion has had to contend with a post-colonial reality and the indigenization of ministry, leadership, and liturgy in ways that make obvious the diversity, divergence, and conflict among the tribes, cultures, and peoples who make up the communion.

The quest to reconstitute “sameness” as a proxy for unity has led, in the past decade, to the establishment of something called “orthodoxy,” departure from which is deemed to be departure from faithfulness. Among those pursuing this retrenchment of sameness under the rubric of orthodoxy (with orthodoxy understood as “what we believe and not what you believe”), diversity, divergence, and conflict constitute a basis for division, not a challenge to negotiate unity, a common life, communion.

In Constructing Local Theologies, Robert Schreiter asserts that catholicity is a movement toward unity among diverse, divergent, and even conflicted local churches. As a movement, it depends on both polar elements—the unity of one pole and the diversity of the other. It is precisely in honouring this movement, and in holding its elements in creative tension, that the episcopal ministry of the church finds its contemporary purpose. Those who inhabit the office that refracts the church’s episcopal ministry are not free simply to insist on sameness as the only possible basis for unity. Nor is it faithful to abandon the quest for unity in favour of an orthodoxy that they themselves define and by which they would exclude others from human and divine communion.

Unity is not the means by which the church carries forward God’s mission in its life and ministry. It is not an instrument by which God pursues God’s purposes for creation. Unity is itself among the ends of God’s mission. Unity is at the heart of the church’s sacramental understanding of relationships as expressed in marriage. God seeks to knit together the diverse, divergent, and conflicted tribes, cultures, and peoples of the earth. God calls us in our baptism into a community—the body of Christ—whose mandate includes a call to incorporate every “Other” into the meaning of “We.” It is the work of those who inhabit the office of bishop to serve and refract this dimension of the ministry of the baptized.

The world is plagued with hostility, indifference, and violence among its human creatures. And our failure to inhabit the communion with one another for which we were created has consequences not only for our common life, but also for the mutual custodianship by which we relate to earth and earth’s creatures. That mutual custodianship first comes to light in Genesis 1 and 2, in which the fruit of the garden is to sustain its human inhabitants, and in which God declares the human vocation “to till and keep it.”

The episcopal ministry of the community of the baptized, and of those who serve that ministry as bishops, is one of a comprehensive mutuality that gathers earth and earth’s creatures into the peaceable kingdom promised, among other places, by the prophet Isaiah. The proclamation and enacting of this comprehensive mutuality is at the heart of episcopal ministry, a ministry betrayed whenever the community of the baptized, or those who serve it as bishops, allow diversity, divergence, and conflict to overwhelm the community and obstruct the work of God’s Holy Spirit by fostering or enacting the division of the world into a holy, good, and faithful “Us” and a diabolical, evil, and apostate “Them.”

The episcopal ministry of the baptized, and of those who refract and serve that ministry as bishops, is a vector aimed at the heart of God’s dream for creation, of God’s promised and emerging kingdom. Every act that fosters communion in the face of diversity, divergence, and conflict contributes to the church’s episcopal ministry and participates in the mission of God, who has, in Christ, “broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us” (Ephesians 2:14). It is not, it turns out, just Gentile and Jew that God sets out to reconcile, but the whole household of creation.

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
⁷The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
⁸The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
⁹They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:6–9)

What a wayfarer might first glimpse of the Pilsdon Community in Dorset, England. Photo by Nicole Uzans.

Travel tales. The Bible is full of them. It’s full of stories about people who wandered in the desert, who fled their houses or were cast out. There are stories of people who went empty-handed into cities and towns, whose first question on arriving anywhere might have been, “Where can I stay?” and who maybe never stayed anywhere long enough to really belong. People like Mary and Joseph, Jonah, or Andrew, Simon, and James, who dropped their nets and left the shore to walk with Jesus when he invited them.

These travellers are people caught in the circumstances of their lives and times, compelled to wander way out beyond where they are comfortable to places where the only certainty is that God will abide with them. That kind of travel takes a lot of nerve and a lot of faith, though like any spiritual practice, what is needed to do it well is strengthened mostly by doing it.

I’m not sure when I began travelling. Growing up, my family took plenty of road trips and moved around a certain amount. Some of those early moves were difficult, but I suppose I got used to it. When I was sixteen, I took a summer job in northern Ontario and to hear my mother talk about it, she’d say that was when she realized I was someone who needed to get out there and roam around on my own. I guess I looked pretty happy with a pack on my back and “home” somewhere behind me.

Some years later, I went backpacking in Europe, mostly travelling alone and mostly wondering what on earth I was doing. I brushed up against lots of history and culture, but if you’ve really travelled, you know that mostly what you encounter out there is yourself. Always adapting and reorienting can be a little destabilizing, or at least it was for me. After a couple of months of moving through places where everyone else had settled jobs and homes and routines, I was ready to get off the road.

But when I got back to Canada, I took a job at a backpackers’ hostel and it was there that travel and ministry started to come together for me. Every day I welcomed people travelling for every imaginable reason. There were tourists and international students, people kicked out of their apartments, and people in town for family reunions.

I sat at the reception desk and heard stories from around the world. Always I was amazed at how travellers found connection with one another. I started to see the hostel as a constantly shifting community, with some of us pretty tight because we worked together over months or years, and some of us immediately folded in, then released as travel landed us here one day and elsewhere the next. Every day, people would meet and go exploring together, or go out looking for food. Out of very mixed company, some truly astonishing alliances were made.

For me, that was kind of like being in church. I can say that because the church I was a part of in Ottawa, St. John the Evangelist, is somewhat notorious for its diversity. It’s a downtown church that gathers people from every social pocket into common worship. I went there as a young student steeped in a school environment, initially because I wanted to be around people who were not like me. Where were the grandmothers and families and street people and activists?  St. John’s had them all, and being part of that community opened up invitations to all sorts of dinner parties, justice campaigns, parades, and prayer meetings.

So there I was, part of several vibrant communities in the city, with a sense of motion and movement all around me. Through St. John’s I was waking up to the rich history and traditions of Christianity, becoming steeped in scripture and prayer, and thinking seriously about what this meant for living my life. Through my job, I was practising hospitality every day and moving with the flow of what I might call “unintentional community.” I was happy, but starting to get restless. Then a postcard came in the mail.

There are few moments in my life when Jesus has met me at the shore and said, “Drop what you’re doing.”  That was one of them. The postcard was sent from the first person I’d met at St. John’s and it showed the inside of the church at the Pilsdon Community in southern England. On the back, my friend had written, “This would be a wonderful place to spend some time if you’re ever in the UK.”

Within a few months, I’d packed up my Ottawa life, sold my furniture, and arrived at Pilsdon with two bags and the clothes I stood in. What I found was a humble community offering prayer, work, and welcome—a contemporary interpretation of monasticism being lived out by a core of questing Christians and a steady stream of guests seeking some release from personal struggles. Though some stay for years, Pilsdon is a place of pilgrimage, with members and guests staying “for as long as it takes” to absorb a radically different way of living with one another and with oneself. Everyone shares in the work of growing and preparing food on this small farm, then shares in the open table meals each day. It’s a rhythm that’s been going for 50 years.

I was a stranger to the country and to life on a mixed farm, but so quickly, it was like I’d always been there. In many ways, Pilsdon is as stable as the seasons. Planting, harvesting, birthing, slaughter, picnic lunches, or tea by the fireside—what we did had everything to do with when we did it. And every day followed a pattern of prayers—wonderfully contemplative psalms and readings—which in turn followed the liturgical seasons. Our stability as a community was in accord with terrestrial and cosmic rhythms.

But there was much about Pilsdon that was unpredictable and even chaotic. It was a place that welcomed people from every margin of society into one community, so every day promised some excitement—and no shortage of struggle and pain. For one thing, there was no telling who would be next to arrive. The same day might see a drunken wayfarer looking for an overnight and an unannounced visit from the bishop of Manchester. Each would be welcomed with a cup of tea, though the wayfarer would then be asked to go elsewhere to sober up and the bishop might be treated to a tour of the pigsty.

I think if you lived at Pilsdon enough years you really would see it all: burnt soup and broken windows, runaway cows, family reunions, blazing rows, covert love affairs, depression defeated, and drug habits picked up again, life getting worse and life getting better, all in your own household.

I learned at Pilsdon that “welcome” is ongoing. I don’t just mean that there will always be new people coming through the door, but that the space we make for one another can always expand—and that it has to, because God’s work in our lives is always unfolding. Who we know ourselves to be today and who we know our neighbour to be, and who we know ourselves as a community to be today is always just a part of the full reality. I certainly felt myself welcomed and unfolding at Pilsdon. Being there was like dwelling in the presence of God and I was willing to stay.

Yes, I was willing, but the British Home Office was not, and though I and the community did everything we could to keep me in the country, my willingness kept getting detoured by red tape. Last winter, while our request for a work permit worked its way through the Home Office, I waited—first in Canada, then in Boston, where I got involved with another, very different community.

When finally a solution was found and I could go back to Pilsdon, my heart had shifted. In Boston I made some connections that left me with big questions about where I was called to be next. All summer I wrestled with those questions and ultimately discerned that I need to be on this side of the ocean now. That’s as much as I know. What I’m supposed to be doing here, who I’m supposed to be with, and how I’m supposed to talk about any of this is hidden from sight right now.

I can sympathize with poor Jonah. Like him, I’ve had moments of hearing God clearly. Like him, I’ve sometimes had major disagreements with what I’ve heard. And now, when my thoughts and my plans don’t seem to be getting me quite “there,” I can sympathize with Jonah in the belly of the fish, so dependent on God to carry me safely and spit me up somewhere that I can hear the call more clearly.

Is this ministry?  This living out of a meandering traveller’s tale?  It might be. As Christians, our ministry is recognized in baptism, the going underwater, where we can neither breathe nor see nor hear clearly, so that we can emerge cleansed and ready to be as God knows us to be. In the church we receive baptism only once, but I wonder if that one time sets the pattern for our whole ministry, where we continually move in and out of clarity, and with every emergence we are reminded that God is with us all the time. All the time.

Canoes are a common mode of transport in the Solomons. Photo by Vianney Carriere.

On the surface, peace has returned to Solomon Islands. Many businesses are booming, the incoming planes are full of expatriates, and there is finally the desperately needed “law and order” that enables a country to prosper. Yet many feel that the country (and especially its capital, Honiara) is a time bomb waiting to explode again, as it did in anti-Chinese riots a couple of years ago. Unemployed youth move to Honiara, and the gap between rich and poor increases. Acts of ethnic violence continue. Is there any way the country can put to rest its unhappy past? One answer is a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

Roots of the conflict

From 1999 to 2003, Solomon Islands went through a period of “ethnic tension” that came close to becoming a civil war. Solomon Islands is a small nation in the southwest Pacific with a population approaching 500,000. It has many ethnic and linguistic groups. Two of the biggest islands are Malaita and Guadalcanal. On the latter is located the capital of the country, Honiara, a city of about 60,000 people. Honiara grew out of a World War II airbase established by the United States as they pushed the Japanese off Guadalcanal at the beginning of the war.

Both the base and the town attracted many workers and their families, especially from the heavily populated island of Malaita nearby. Over the years the Malaita population spread out into the rural Guadalcanal and became much of the labour force in the oil, palm, and gold mining industries. There are big cultural differences between Malaita and Guadalcanal, and there was increasing conflict over the years, including some killings.

Finally, in 1999, a Guadalcanal militant force, the Guadalcanal Liberation Army (GLA), attacked Malaita settlements on Guadalcanal, driving the Malaitans back to Malaita and into Honiara. At first the Malaitans did not retaliate, but eventually a corresponding Malaita militant force was formed, the Malaita Eagle Force (MEF). For a few months the two forces fought it out, and in the process the MEF precipitated a coup that brought down the elected government. About 100 people died in the conflict, but thousands lost their homes and were traumatized in other ways.

During this time there were armed conflicts, kidnappings, torture, murders, and human rights abuses on all sides, mostly on Guadalcanal but also in other provinces as the militant groups tried  to establish control. Finally, through the work of the churches, women's groups, and overseas countries, a cease-fire was called; the Townsville Peace Agreement was signed, and a multinational force, the Regional Assistance Mission for Solomon Islands (RAMSI), was invited into the country to restore law and order, and give support to the judiciary, police, and financial sectors.

Since the RAMSI presence (still present after six years), the country has generally been peaceful, but many people have scars from the ethnic tension years—especially related to loved ones killed, tortured, or missing. The government and RAMSI have pursued many of these situations as criminal cases, but often there has been no deep reconciliation between the parties. Other cases are still not known or are unresolved.

National reconciliation?

For some years, Solomon Islands churches have been asking for a government TRC rather like South Africa's, to enable victims of the conflict to voice their experiences and for perpetrators to offer their repentance, all in the interests of reconciliation and the peaceful future of the country.

Finally this year Parliament passed legislation to form the Solomon Islands TRC, and in late March, Archbishop Desmond Tutu came to the Solomons to launch it. The TRC has five members (three men, two women), and the chair is the Rev. Sam Ata, former dean of St. Barnabas (Anglican) Cathedral in Honiara. There are two overseas members from Fiji and Peru.

The TRC work began in August, so we are now waiting. Will it accomplish what is hoped? It has a two-year mandate and the power to travel all over the country and to subpoena witnesses. It does not have the power to grant or recommend full amnesty to perpetrators but testimony given by them cannot be used in courts, so there is a kind of limited amnesty. But will the victims come forward to testify? And will perpetrators be willing to share their stories?

Such a national reconciliation process is new for the Solomons, but it happens all the time in villages and in families. I sometimes say that Solomon Islands cultures are centripetal rather than centrifugal, with people always returning to reconciliation with their community. Therefore, I am hopeful about this process.

In Solomon Islands there are three strands of reconciliation—the traditional cultures, Christianity (and other new religions), and government; reconciliation is not usually complete unless all are three are deeply involved. Somehow the TRC must bring all three strands into relationship with each other to reach maximum truth-telling, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Often Western advisors are uncomfortable with this integration of traditional culture, Christianity, and secular government, but it is clearly the Solomon Islands way.

Already there have been some difficulties. Amnesty International, for example, has criticized the limited amnesty provision, arguing that those who committed human rights abuses should not be protected in any way but rather face full criminal charges. Personally, I think this criticism is premature and ignores the other two strands of the Solomons' reality: traditional culture and the church.

Some militants have already faced court cases, been imprisoned and served their sentences, and feel that they have already paid the price for their actions; they do not want to go through the process all over again. They also argue that some politicians who were involved in, or even instigated, the conflict (“the big fish”) might hide behind the TRC rather than face criminal charges.

There is also the fear that new revelations will produce new demands for traditional compensation payments, perhaps even from the government for not providing the police services that should have protected the population from such abuse.

But in the end the process belongs to the victims of the abuses, and I think that is its strength. It means that their pain will not be ignored but be given a chance to express itself. If the TRC members are good listeners and prepared to go to some of the most remote places in the Solomons under uncomfortable conditions, then I think the TRC will work. They also need to work without fear and be willing to subpoena some of the most powerful people in the country, for many are under suspicion still. And the stories of former militants also have to be taken seriously, as they did not act without cause.

The TRC was launched with the prayers of the nation. Those prayers will continue—that the TRC be good listeners and be treated with respect and cooperation; that all parties in the conflict be willing to share their stories, listen to one another, forgive and accept justice; that politicians not use the process for their own purposes; and that the rest of the world (especially our close powerful neighbours) support the process and not try to manipulate or subvert it. We ask for your prayers too.

Catherine and her daughter enjoy an evening of Scrabble at a pension in Cappadocia, Turkey—one stop on their epic 2008 Europe trip. Photo by Jamie Howison.

As a bi-racial (black and white) adoptee, one of my childhood fantasies growing up in a white, middle-class Canadian family was that I was a princess. I secretly believed that the day I met my biological parents I would be greeted warmly by the queen and king of some distant and mysterious African country.

Needless to say, a small part of my imagination was bruised when, at age 21, I met, for the first time, my biological parents. My birth mother was a Caucasian Mennonite from southern Manitoba and my birth father turned out to be the direct descendant of southern U.S. slaves. There was no royalty in my lineage—at least none that was possible to trace.

Despite this secret fantasy, meeting my birth parents was never ultimately about reclaiming lost family. I have a family, and I never felt like I didn’t belong. Finding my birth parents was always about completing the puzzle that was my life. It was about getting answers to questions about where I came from and why I look the way I do.

So, when my daughter and I developed a close relationship with my biological grandparents it was a delightful surprise. Since they had no other grandchildren, I filled a certain place in their lives, and the opportunity to do that was a blessing to me. When my grandmother died this past March my daughter and I mourned in the same way we would have had she been our grandma all our lives. My relationship with my birth mother did not develop in the same way.

Giving me up had left such a hole in Darlene’s heart that she spent the next 38 years trying to fill it with alcohol and nicotine. By the time I came back into her life there was no room for me, or anyone else, for that matter. But, cancer found its way in and, in an already compromised body, it made its way quickly and effortlessly through her lungs, lymphatic system, bones, and eventually her brain.

One evening in May I got the call I had been dreading for some time. Darlene’s ex-husband told me that she was in the hospital with pneumonia brought on by lung cancer. Having been estranged from her for 11 years, I had a choice to make. Did I step in and be there for her as she faced death? Or did I thank him for informing me, hang up the phone, and leave that door closed, focusing instead on my own family?

It would have been much easier to let Darlene live (or die) with the consequences of all her bad choices. Who could fault me? I didn’t owe her anything. She wasn’t my real mother.

But God had a different plan. The night I got the call, I was awakened several times by the image and voice of my grandmother, Darlene’s mother, telling me gently and clearly, “Be there.” When morning finally came I cried inconsolably for some time. The tears were not of sadness for Darlene; they were tears for me. I desperately did not want the job God was setting before me. This woman did not deserve the love and compassion only a child can provide a dying parent. She had walked away—twice. I was angry with God for asking me to do this.

But I am a Christian, and I try to live as a disciple of Christ. God was clear: I was to be Christ to her in her death. I was to show her that God loved her as much as God loves me. If God can love me in all of my screw-ups, God could surely love her in hers.

So, over the next six weeks I walked with my birth mother, helping her make her final arrangements and setting her affairs in order. I did what I could to bring healing and peace to her in her final days. She died on June 13.

Darlene never really apologized to anyone close to her, including me, for the wrongs she had done to them. I don’t know the state of her heart as she drew her last breath. I don’t know if she asked God’s forgiveness, but I can’t help but think she knew God loved her and forgave her because he gave her me.

Through this experience, I have learned that it doesn’t matter what theology books I read, how often I attend worship, or how much money I give to the church. God will use me in ways that are a joy and in ways that will draw out every ounce of strength and courage God can muster from me. My only task is to be obedient to both.

Illustration by Abe Gurvin

The Anglican Church of Canada’s newest department—the Department of Philanthropy—is organized to serve as a resource for the whole church. Its mission is to combine stewardship education and financial development initiatives into an integrated, collaborative approach involving parishes, dioceses, General Synod, and national partners.

A thoughtful reading of both the Baptismal Covenant and the mission statement of the Anglican Church of Canada reveals that part of being a faithful Anglican Christian is understanding the theology of generosity. There are three areas where the Department of Philanthropy can help parishes and diocese express generosity:

1. Strategic planning

“'For surely I know the plans I have for you,' says the Lord…'to give you a future with hope.'”  Jeremiah 29:11

Every parish and diocese needs a strategic plan. This document should answer several questions: What is God calling us to do and become as a community of faith? What is our mission? How can we live out the Baptismal Covenant? How can we make a difference in the lives of other people, especially the vulnerable?

The Department of Philanthropy can help your church build on the great work already done in diocesan pilot projects and partners-in-action programs. This typically involves focusing on a planning study, built upon a vision that parish and diocesan clergy and lay leaders have for their life and work. The study helps focus on areas of strength and opportunity, which in turn help develop local and regional ministry resources.

2. Stewardship education

“God does not want us to do extraordinary things; He wants us to do ordinary things extraordinarily well.”  — Bishop Charles Gore

Every parish and diocese needs to make stewardship education—in all its fullness—a priority. That means having well-equipped lay and clergy leaders who take this aspect of ministry seriously.

We have found some very fine new stewardship education resources that should be required reading for every priest and lay leader prepared to work in this field. They include:

a) The S Word: Reflections on Stewardship with Practical Programme Suggestions by Archbishop Douglas Hambidge (The Episcopal Network for Stewardship, 2009).  Drawing on decades of worldwide experience, Douglas Hambidge brings us the stewardship theology he has taught in congregations and at diocesan, ecumenical, and international events. He uses familiar scripture as well as heartwarming stories to teach that money is sacramental, our own need to give is the basis for our stewardship, and our love for God is shown through our offerings. The S Word can be used in stewardship committees, parish councils, adult classes, training and planning sessions, on retreats, or in diocesan gatherings.

b) “New Consecration Sunday Stewardship Program” by Herb Miller (Abingdon Press, 2007). There are two versions of this resource: a Guest Leader Guide with CD-ROM, and a Team Member’s Manual. An Estimate of Giving card is also available for parishioners to make an annual pledge or commitment. This proven-winner resource suggests that parishes approach their finances by teaching stewardship from a spiritual perspective rather than a fundraising one.  It focuses on the question, “What is God calling me to do?” rather than “What does the church need in order to pay its bills?” The original program has helped thousands of congregations in North America increase financial giving by 15% to 30%, and has been used in parishes in the Diocese of Rupert’s Land for some years. The revised version features a CD-ROM with the audio overview of the program, a PowerPoint presentation, editable letters, and communication tools. The program calls for an outside guest leader to give strong guidance to the local parish.

c) Another excellent resource is A Program to Encourage Sacrificial Giving In Your Parish (Stewardship Development Department, Diocese of Toronto, 2008), published after four years of wide use and impressive tangible results in the Diocese of Toronto. One real strength of this program is its sound theological base.

3. Gift planning

“Consider your possessions loaned to you by God.” — St. Catherine of Siena

Gift planning (or “planned giving”) refers to the faithful and responsible stewardship of accumulated assets. Our diocesan consultants, working with departmental staff, professional advisors, and above all, our faithful donors, have made an amazing contribution to the life of our church through planned gifts, largely through bequests, gift annuities, and gifts of listed securities.

In many places we are still missing opportunities to help people to grow in their understanding of generosity. In many parishes and dioceses in the past decade or so we have seen wonderful results of careful, pastoral education in this emerging aspect of vital ministry.

In the Department of Philanthropy, our staff and volunteers are prepared to work with your parish and diocese in each of these three key areas. We have resources, experience­­­ and expertise. We are offering to be a partner with you as you respond faithfully to God’s call to be generous.

For more information, please email me, Archdeacon John Robertson, or call toll-free, 1.888.439.GIFT (4438).

A rare look heavenward from a busy workspace. Photo by {link:http://www.flickr.com/photos/striatic/241843728/}Striatic{/link} available under a Creative Commons license.

In this busy online world of text, quick emotional hits are easy. With a few clicks you can get a hit of intelligence (news headlines), amusement (web comics), or schadenfreude (celebrity gossip). But the bigger fish to catch is the deep satisfaction that comes after reading something challenging, informative, and in-depth—that spiritual refreshment you get after an evening curled up with a good book or magazine.

It’s not a matter of lacking good things to read. There are tons of materials out there.

Instead, our reading posture is part of the problem. We hunch over laptops. We poke and stroke our BlackBerries. We are frozen in these poses for work and even fun. When we curl up on the couch, we have in hand our hard-edged device that whirrs, overheats, or runs out of battery power.

Then, of course, there are the visual distractions. Any text we read on our computers, even in word processors, is bordered by buttons saying we can be somewhere else, checking out a new feature, or buying a product. Web writers fight to keep you reading with bold words, hyperlinks, and •bullets. It all gets rather noisy.

But it’s part of experiencing what some call “a second Gutenberg moment.” The ways we produce and consume the printed word are shifting radically. While technology is getting slicker and some people have already adjusted with ease (like you folks skimming this and The Brothers Karamazov on your iPhone), for most of us, concentrated online reading is still awkward.

Screens and spirituality

As with other content, quick Christian hits are easy to find, like the YouTube video on God’s omnipotence, or the passion play tweeted on Twitter. These have their place as experiments, but their sum amounts to a thin spirituality.

Christians shouldn’t let the reductive nature of the Internet prevent them from angling for that big fish of reading satisfaction, because this is what propels much of the spiritual life. Especially for ministry leaders, long stretches of attentive reading are essential, whether they contemplate the Psalms or wrestle with N. T. Wright.  It’s not about abandoning book culture (long may it live!) but rather about finding ways to cultivate similar experiences in this new world of screen-staring.

One obvious starting point is to ensure that the text we post on the Internet is of good quality. We should be in but not of the online world—communicating well, but not diluting the richness of the gospel.

We can also reflect on how online reading evolved from an ancient activity. Back in the fourth century, St. Augustine was amazed to see his mentor St. Ambrose reading silently to himself. This showed him a new, interior way of digesting text beyond the read-aloud culture he was used to. Reading online is yet another shift: it’s still interior, but with a new tool that links our thinking brains to our typing fingers.

A friend of mine once said, “I can see the state of my soul when I try to concentrate on reading a novel.” With online reading, we see the states of our souls all too vividly. Not only do we tune in to our usual internal static, but we can act on these thoughts and impulses right away—thanks to the intimacy of the screen and the proximity of the keyboard.

These screen-and-keyboard selves can be nimble and productive, but they can also be easily distracted, prone to nasty comments, and self-indulgent. That news spoof site is always just two clicks away from your budget spreadsheet.

So maybe while we wait for comfier devices, we can work on these unique self-struggles of online reading. This, at least, is in the familiar Christian territory of spiritual discipline. We might just feel better reading online, get more done, and unlock the huge potential of this exciting new medium.

As for this mag

This here MinistryMatters, one of our most popular print resources, has joined the busy online world of text. After our last print edition one keen woman sent us a photo of her husband reading a (rather soggy) copy in the hot tub. “We’re glad that you’re in print,” she wrote. “We don’t like to read online!”

We understand. But we also hope that there are some pieces here that you consider worth your online reading discipline. And we also hope that you’re disciplined enough not to curl up and read this online magazine in the hot tub. Maybe someday.

Detail from "The Fall of Man" (painting) by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1530.

These days we pay a lot of lip-service to relational theology. We talk about how human beings were created for right relationships with our Creator, with each other, and for right relatedness with the rest of creation. Yet our theologies are almost exclusively anthropocentric, because we have launched them from Genesis 3—the story of humanity’s fall—instead of Genesis 1 and 2, where the intent of relationship is described clearly, albeit incompletely.

If we start with the fall

If we start our theologies with the fall, it’s not clear that right relationship is the Creator’s focus. We are left to infer this in reverse from the deception and brokenness described in Genesis 3, where the essence is, “Oops, we messed up. Woe is us! We are lost and separated. How will we find the way?”

One consequence of starting with this brokenness is that we arrive at an interpretation deeply rooted in dualism. It goes something like this: only human beings are spiritual and redeemable; the rest of creation is destined for destruction and replacement. Sin enters God’s realm through humans but it takes place due to the enticement of non-human, material creation. Lacking a spiritual essence, non-human, non-redeemable material creation is subsequently treated as hostile and evil. Humanity must then pursue redemption in this hostile, twisted and distorted world. Only a measure of temporary relief is afforded while we await the fullness of a future redemption.

Augustine was deeply engaged in this type of dualistic thinking, as was Thomas Aquinas and other theologians throughout the years. Harmful theologies have resulted when church leadership has focused on the fall and the separation of the material world from its spiritual nature—the essence of God’s impartation in all of creation. Theologies that label people “godless heathens” and argue to “kill the Indian, save the child” proceed from this place of dualistic thought. So do notions that, in the end times, creation will be consumed by fire and only human beings will be saved, and will inhabit a new, ex nihilo or “out of nothing”  heaven and earth.

This is the view from the bottom, looking up through the fall. And yet, the creation narrative in Genesis 1 and 2 brings into sharp relief that such was not the intent of our Creator. The view from the top—from the beginning—looks different.

Taking it from the top

In Genesis 1 and 2, creation is seen to be innately relational because it is ontologically spiritual. The spiritual essence of God, present as the Spirit broods over the waters, is instilled in creation in a deeply relational way. All life was created to have relationship with God, each in its respective way through its form and function. (See Genesis 1:28–30, Job 12, and Romans 1 and 8.)  Human beings, animals, plant life, birds, and fish were linked to their Creator spiritually and intuitively—an intuition I would suggest is retained in the rest of creation but which in humans has been supplanted by ego and ethnocentrism.

When animals are brought before the prototype human being to ascertain the association they (the human and the rest of creation) will have, it becomes clear that right relationship is at creation’s very core—it is ontological. Genesis 1:28–30 describes the nurturing reciprocity built into creation, and while the animals prove unsatisfactory for the full companionship needs of humanity, their spiritual relatedness to each other and to the human emerges in the process of naming. This intrinsic, spiritual, and relational understanding of animals is something that First Nations people have traditionally appreciated more than Western society.

Genesis 2 describes an even more intimate relationship—something that the apostle Paul would much later describe as a profound mystery. In an act of passion and love (an act repeated in human procreation through the eons), God makes one human being into two—each fully human yet neither complete without the other. In the aloneness of the single human, there is an acknowledgement of the incompleteness of creation; this aloneness is ended by division and subsequently merging, as the two become one flesh.

In this profound description of God’s creative will in Genesis 1 and 2, right relationship with God and each other is clear. The foundation of relationship—its spiritual essence—is made manifest in all creation.

If we understand God’s original intention, then we understand the fall and restoration more profoundly. Adam and Eve, in their disobedience, descend into a state of separation in their relationship with the Creator, and a far-reaching pronouncement is made, with consequences for all of creation. The curse shreds each aspect of original relationship. The effects of the curse, though pronounced on the male and female, nonetheless implicate all of the created order. For the male, the previous idyllic relationship in creation—wanting for nothing and not having to labour for sustenance—turns to toil and hardship. For the woman, egalitarian intimacy with her husband yields to bringing forth children in pain and suffering. Relationship is replaced with subservience, which is exploited by men century upon century.

And, for humanity yet to come, relational intimacy with the One who made them is subjected to distorted yearnings, punctuated regularly by an idolatry that misrepresents the intended relationship. This is the curse. All of creation, as Paul would note, is subjected to its effect, and all await a future, full redemption.

Can we live in a restored relationship?

In Jesus, the curse is practically and prophetically broken. We may now live out from under its effects—at least in theory.

While this is clearly a “now but not yet” reality, one in which we both receive and await the fulfillment of the promise, capacity for right relationship has been restored. This ought to have implications for the way in which we live our lives within all of God’s creation—not just the way in which we treat human beings. We are expected to demonstrate right relatedness with all creation.

This ought to go far beyond the traditional thinking of stewardship and increasingly popular notions of “creation care.”  At times this smacks of an anthropocentric utilitarianism—a “what’s best for us” approach. The fact is, the redemption made possible because of Jesus is as much for the rest of creation as for human beings. It was “subjected to futility”; it did not subject itself.

What might we do then to live out from under the curse of damaged relationship?

First, we must work toward understanding Genesis 1 as the proper starting place for biblical theology and praxis. Once we restore the proper starting place we must realize that the essence of God—the very breath of God—has been imparted to the whole of creation, such that it “became a living soul” or in Hebrew, nephesh chay or chay nephesh (see Genesis 1:30 and 2:7). While humanity has been given the gift of divine image and likeness (whatever that might fully mean), the rest of creation is nonetheless possessed of a spiritual nature instilled by the creative acts of the Spirit of God who brooded over chaos and brought forth all of life, not just human. This should have implications for how we live in the cosmos—whether it is in our treatment of humans, animals, plants, or rocks, or in our understanding of human spirituality.

Second, human complementarity—which has descended into frequent hell on earth between men and women—must become the renewed reality of a curse removed, not a disfigurement retained. The essence of the Trinity of God is herein represented and must therefore be herein restored. Subjugation of women and/or men in any form under the guise of personal autonomy and liberty is an aberration and runs contrary to the model of the one “who did not consider equality with God something to be grasped” (Philippians 2:6).

Or, at least, that is what should be happening. Sadly, we seem to enjoy living under, not out-from-under, the curse.

But then perhaps scripture’s admonition to faith—spoken and lived—is apropos: “that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe” (Galatians 3:22).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jeremiah Community members, in order of appearance:

The Rev. Lance Dixon, team leader
Meagan Crosby-Shearer, pilgrim/spiritual care
Rob Crosby-Shearer, director of community formation
Sam Harding, community networker

For more information, visit www.jeremiahproject.ca

Make your own MinistryMatters video

Each issue of MinistryMatters features a short (under five minute) video about a Canadian Anglican ministry. Subjects can range from an unusual Sunday school program to a profile of a vestment artist. Be creative!

Please email the editor to start a conversation about your video. Once your idea is accepted, MinistryMatters will loan you, by mail, a simple video camera with basic editing software so you can film your ministry yourself.