Diocesan News
Deputies' Notebook
By Susan Langle
Jun 19, 2006, 08:19

With a Big Red Exclamation Point, our Church says Yes.  Yes will choose life.  Yes with eyes and hearts wide open we see and hear that the Holy One, who is always doing a new thing, is walking among us.  We say Yes with our logical minds and our soaring spirits. We say Yes with all the hope we can muster, that we will grow and flourish.  Yes, the branches of the vine twist and turn in unexpected directions, toward the Sun so that the fruit might ripen, and feed the hungry and make hearts glad.  We choose to be one humble and joyful precinct of the Reign of God where the gifts of each and every person are called out, and where each and every friend of Jesus is sent out join in God’ mission in this world God made and loves from the everlasting depths of the Sacred Center of the Universe. 

Yesterday, the lay and clergy you sent to this General convention looked around the floor of the House of Deputies and saw the Beloved Community in the faces of companions in this holy work.  The whooping and hollering and the tears of stunned joy went on and on.  For me, the jubilation that was constrained in Minneapolis out of loving respect for those whose hearts ached in sorrow, the pent up jubilation of Minneapolis and the astonished delight was unstoppable.  Finally, finally we could rejoice together as a church. 

Today we return to our work of reconciliation, our live into our yearning for communion, our willingness to repent of our trespasses, of our wrongs for things we have done and things we have left undone.  I hope those of us who know in our hearts that we have said our prayers and made the most faithful choices we could make and honestly acknowledge the unintended injures, the pain associated with the impact of our faithful choice.  I pray for the strength to be able to bend in Grace.  I pray that we may hold in respectful love those who disagree with us.  Today we prepare to make our careful and respectful response to our Brothers and Sisters in the Anglican Communion as expressed through the Windsor Report, may the Holy Spirit again manifest herself in our midst. 

I am holding in mind the words of The Rt. Rev. Nedi Rivera offered to yesterday’s meeting of the Episcopal Women’s Caucus:  We thought that the caucus was for us, for the full inclusion of women in the life of the church, and in all the forms of ministry in the church.  And by the afternoon the whole church had spoken that we will live what we pray.  But, for Bishop Rivera and for me, we grow to know that that solidarity of women and the men who love us goes far beyond us.  With our sisters who struggle to feed their grandchildren orphaned by AIDS, with our sisters who try to feed a family of eight with the bread baked in the night hours and sold on the streets of Tegucigalpa during the day, earning on a good day $4, with our little sisters whose greatest dream is to finish primary school, with our sisters in our global community we say Yes, we will stand with you and share our lives with you, and share our bread with you.  

By the power of God women are blessed. By the women of God the bread is blessed.  Amen.