Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Today’s theme was “The Bishop and the Environment” which turned into a second Bible Study (having already had one on Jesus healing the blind man in John 9). For this second study we read the first Creation story in Genesis, and then considered three questions: “What does this story say to us about the challenge to ‘sustain the earth’?” “How, in your context, do you experience the fallenness of creation?” “How in the Anglican Communion globally can we participate more effectively in efforts to ‘sustain and renew the earth’?”
Good questions, all of them! But rather strange, I thought, as the Creation story per se doesn’t seem to me to speak directly to any of them! (Perhaps you can get to those questions in some circuitous route, e.g., God considered the creation good; what was good about it? is it still ‘good’? in what ways? how has it been damaged? what responsibility do we have to deal with the damage? etc. But, my own conviction is that a Bible Study ought to be about the passage in question, and not a tangent to a tangent to a tangent from it.)
This afternoon we posed for the official “Lambeth Photograph,” all 650 of us (in rochets and chimeres, on a very warm afternoon!) on risers specially erected for the occasion. It took about an hour to get all the Bishops into place, and then they took the photos using two cameras side-by-side snapping simultaneously. Later they will digitally merge the two into one very wide-angle photograph to commemorate the Conference.
Interestingly enough, in addition to the photo with all the male Bishops, the women Bishops also had a separate set taken of them by themselves. (I have to wonder how they might have reacted to the suggestion that there be a male-Bishops-only photo taken.)
This afternoon was open, and I was invited to a small party given by Alan and Ruth Gledhill, both reporters for the London Times. Our own George Conger has become friends with Ruth over the past few years, and he is actually staying in the little house the Times has rented for them for the duration of the Conference. Ruth is the religion reporter for the Times, and in my opinion one of the best such journalists in the world. So it was a treat to be included in a house party for about 30 folks: Bishops, journalists, and staffers.
Not a lot of news, today, I’m afraid. Tomorrow will be a day of worship. And then this last week should prove to be a “make it or break it” time for this 14th Lambeth Conference. Do keep praying that the Holy Spirit will have his way among us.
Warmest regards in our Lord,
–(The Right Rev.) John W. Howe is Bishop of Central Florida