The Rev. Canon Lloyd S. Casson, clergyman and noted leader in the Episcopal Church, will be honored June 3 by the Wilmington, Delaware community and his parish as he officially retires after 43 years of ministry.

A native Delawarean, Casson has served for 10 years as the rector of the Episcopal Church of Saints Andrew and Matthew, a unique parish formed out of the union of two historic Episcopal churches in Wilmington, Delaware—one with a predominantly white membership and the other predominantly black—committed to being an instrument of reconciliation and diversity.

For more information, visit the Episcopal Church of Saints Andrew and Matthew web site at www.ssam.org.

Read it all here.

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"In 1619, shortly before his election as dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, one of the most distinguished clerics in England sent some of his youthful, and now rather embarrassing, writings to a friend. Included, for instance, was a tract called Biathanatos, which defended suicide. "Publish it not," the eminent churchman insisted, and yet 'burn it not.' As for the notorious love poems, well, manuscript copies of those had been circulating for years. They, he pointed out, had been 'written by Jack Donne, and not by Dr. Donne.' "

For a weekend change of pace, read Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Dirda's review of a new biography of John Donne.

We offer prayers for The Rev. Jerry Falwell, his family and friends. A Liberty University executive said The Rev. Falwell died today, Tuesday. He was 73.

Earlier, the executive said Falwell was hospitalized in "gravely serious" condition after being found unconscious in his office.

Ron Godwin, the executive vice president of Falwell's Liberty University, said Falwell was found unresponsive around 10:45 a.m. and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital. Godwin said he was not sure what caused the collapse, but "he has a history of heart challenges."

More from the BBC HERE

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it is said, “When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people.”

- Ephesians 4

The Ledger:

While he was in prison, where he spent many hours ministering to inmates with AIDS, he had heard that Trinity was having its own crisis. It had lost dozens of members to the disease. Its surviving congregation was struggling.

A few days after his release in 2006, Tramel said, he visited the church and immediately knew it was his destiny.

Now the Rev. James Tramel's name is on the sign in front of the historic building. By a unanimous vote of the church's vestry and the approval of the bishop of the diocese, he became the church's rector late last year.

"James is a living witness to the fact that there really is hope," said the Rev. Jim Richardson, an Episcopal priest in Sacramento, Calif., who is chaplain of the California Senate. Richardson and many others served as a powerful support system for Tramel while he was incarcerated.

"He is proof that there can be redemption," Richardson said. "That a person really can turn his life around."

Now Tramel is working to change the lives of others, and not only from the pulpit.
...
Tramel, 39, who lives in Berkeley and commutes to his parish in San Francisco in a blue 1967 Volkswagen Beetle, said he remains in awe of his new life.

"It's so hard to describe it," he said. "Just waking up in the middle of the night and seeing my son sleeping so peacefully is amazing. I know I have never done anything to deserve that kind of feeling."

Yet Tramel and his loved ones are realistic about the challenges of his dramatically new life.

"This isn't Cinderella," said Green. "One doesn't so easily begin to live happily ever after after so long in prison. There will be beautiful views, and there will be steep climbs."

There is, for one, the ghost of Michael Stephenson.

"The grief about what I did to Michael is something I have to live with every day."

Desmond Tutu, the acclaimed anti-apartheid leader and former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, is dealing with a relapse of the prostate cancer originally diagnosed in 1996 and in remission for some time. But he's not as interested in talking about his health as he is about what he feels is a more important concern.

The Times of London reports on a recent conversation with the former archbishop:

“What is sad to me is that we are investing so much time and energy in the subject of homosexuality at a time when the world is groaning from poverty, disease and corruption. God must be weeping.”

Just as he opposed discrimination against people because of the colour of their skin or their gender, he said he opposes discrimination against gays.

“I cannot have fought about the injustice of apartheid and keep quiet about the injustice of being being penalised for something about which they can do nothing, their sexual orientation,” he said.

“I cannot have fought about the injustice of apartheid and keep quiet about the injustice of being being penalised for something about which they can do nothing, their sexual orientation,” he said.

The Archbishop, who was today at a conference at Hull university speaking about emancipation and reconciliation, told The Times there were similarities between the conflict over gays and the issue of slavery in the past and present.

“The parallels are that a certain group of people is dealt with differently from the generality; they are dealt with unjustly.”

The Anglican Church had for generations taken pride in “comprehensiveness” as one of its defining features. “Comprehensiveness means you hold a point of view and you hold it in integrity, even when someone else holds a totally different point of view.”

He said one of the happiest times of his life was when, as a young man, he served as a curate in St Mary’s, Bletchingley in 1966. He is thought to have been one of the first black curates in the Church of England.

“We used to be able to say in the Anglican Church that, ‘I differ from you but we belong in the same family.’ What is different now is that there are people who say, ‘I differ from you and therefore we cannot subsist in the same communion.”

Read the entire article here.

A related summary was picked up by United Press International.

A few weeks ago, I made note of a book that one of my fellow RevGals/Episcopal Cafe contributors (Hat tip: Jennifer MacKenzie+) had recommended to me. I went scooting off to the public library only to find it wasn't in the collection. So, I did two things: told the library to get it (which it did), and bought a copy for myself—and promptly lost it, because I've been moving for what feels like forever.

This weekend, I found it—and discovered that a lot of people seem to be talking about it. Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion, by Sara Miles, is a faith memoir of astonishing honesty:

Mine is a personal story of an unexpected and terribly inconvenient Christian conversion, told by a very unlikely convert: a blue-state, secular intellectual; a lesbian, a left-wing journalist with a habit of skepticism. I'm not the person my reporter colleagues ever expected to see exchanging blessings with street-corner evangelists. I'm hardly the person George Bush had in mind to be running a “faith-based charity.” My own family never imagined that I'd wind up preaching the Word of God and serving communion to a hymn-singing flock.

Father Jake has some more quotes and commentary on his impressions after reading half the book, but poking around, LOTS of people are talking about this book. It was featured on the PBS show Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, and you can find an excerpt from the interview and a link to the report here.

Sarx makes an important point about the book's focus: "...what should call every Christian or, indeed, every religious person, is not 'How did this Atheist get religion?' but rather what she did with it once it gets her."

The great question, of course, for many readers of the Cafe who look into this book may be what Communion in Conflict blogger Marshall Montgomery calls an ecclesiastical disobedience, much like civil disobedience, and one that Tom Sramek Jr. notes in his post welcoming the book to his to-read pile:

However, the non-traditional part of this story for me was that Sara was both offered and received the Eucharist prior to being baptized, which is both a rubrical and canonical no-no in the Episcopal Church. Not that it isn't done, it just isn't supposed to be done! Yet, this non-rubrical, non-canonical reception of the Eucharist was the occasion for a person's conversion.

This is bound to get people talking about the question of "Open Communion," and has already opened several hearts to a new point of view.

Michael Bayly has excerpts from The National Catholic Reporter's Review of the book here.

The Revealer has a review here.

And it you're still hungry, take a look at just how many people are talking about this book, here.

The Rev. Dr. John Macquarrie, Episcopal priest and theologian, died May 28th from stomach cancer, according to an obituary published in today's New York Times.

He held several posts including professor of systematic theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford and canon of Christ Church Cathedral at Oxford, and wrote over thirty books including "Principles of Christian Theology" (1966).

Dr. Macquarrie wrote that all language about God was symbolic and not to be taken literally. But it must be taken seriously. To him, what separated believers from nonbelievers was that believers had experienced the revelation that the creation and its existence are good.

“Faith’s name for reality is God,” Dr. Macquarrie wrote in “Paths in Spirituality.”

The Times of London wrote:

A gracious, generous man, he was a traditionalist and opposed to the ordination of women but was never, in any way, a campaigner. A pastoral man, in retirement he helped out at St Andrew’s, Headington, and more than once gave a course of lectures to the congregation, revealing his mastery of his subject in the clarity of his expositions of theology. Always proud of his Celtic origin, he had an open heart, which embraced people of all sorts.

Macquarrie's work influenced generations of Christians of every stripe and his influence is seen in a surprising spectrum of Episcopalians today. As we pray and give thanks for his ministry, some may wish to remember the ways his work touched our lives, thinking, preaching an spirituality in the comments below.

Davis Mac-Iyalla launched the Chicago leg of his 20-city American speaking tour this weekend. In a feature, the Chicago Tribune provides good insight into the context of Mac-Iyalla's visit, recapping his comments from a Sunday talk at Trinity Episcopal Church in Highland Park:

Many conservative Anglicans would agree with Nigerian lay minister Davis Mac-Iyalla that the summer of 2003—when the Episcopal Church approved the first openly gay bishop—left a gaping hole and wrenching pain in their hearts. But not for the same reasons.

For Mac-Iyalla, that summer was when the Anglican Church of Nigeria, in which he was born, baptized and became faithful turned its back on him because he is gay.

"God created me a gay man and put me in the womb of my mother. I was born into the church, baptized and sang in the choir," Mac-Iyalla told parishioners Sunday at Trinity Episcopal Church in Highland Park. "Now, the church rises against me when I speak who I am. The church is supposed to be a house of joy, a house of peace. It has become a place of fire."

...

As the founder of Changing Attitudes Nigeria, part of a larger network that challenges the church's conservative stance, Mac-Iyalla adds a Nigerian point of view that so far has been silent.

...

"He's working for the split and disunity," Mac-Iyalla said, referring to Akinola. "I'm speaking for unity, oneness and equality."

The whole thing is here, including comments from Akin Tunde Popoola, Sandra McPhee and Josh Thomas.

The Rev. Carrie Schofield-Broadbent had some advice for mom on Wednesday. "Pretty is as pretty does," she said. "Choose your battles. Keep it all in perspective and it will work out fine." Schofield-Broadbent preached during an ordination service for her mother, who became the Rev. Kathlyn Schofield, an Episcopal priest, during a two-hour ceremony at Trinity Episcopal Church in Fayetteville.

Renee K. Gadoua writes in the Syracuse, NY (Diocese of Central New York) Post-Standard.

Schofield is one of seven priests Bishop Gladstone "Skip" Adams will ordain this year in ceremonies that began May 30. He will also ordain six people as transitional deacons Saturday at Syracuse's St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral. Transitional deacons will eventually be ordained priests.
The ordinands are part of a program the Episcopal Diocese of Central New York began a few years ago. Many of the people participating are following their religious call as a second career or will work part time as clergy while working elsewhere, Adams said.
The new priests join 129 Episcopal priests ministering to more than 19,000 people in 97 congregations in Central New York, north to Alexandria Bay and south to the Pennsylvania border.
During her homily, Schofield-Broadbent, 32, described the role of priests and baptized people as reflecting God's goodness. "For future reference, the road will not always be smooth," daughter told mother. "How do I know this? Years of experience," she said. Adams ordained her in 2004. She is pastor of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church, Liverpool.
"Love much, dream big, care for yourself as much as you care for others," Schofield-Broadbent told Schofield.
One more thing.
"Keep your hair out of your face," she said.

Read it all HERE

TIME magazine's David Van Biema and Catharine Mayer have written a cover story on the Archbishop of Canterbury. It appears in this week's European and South Pacific editions. The article will likely become the one piece that readers new to the turmoil in the Angican Communion will want to read for a quick, but fairly comprehensive grasp on the situation. It is followed by an in-depth interview (that will probably be of more interest to Communion watchers) in which Williams spells out his reasons for inviting neither Bishops Gene Robinson nor Martyn Minns to the Lambeth Conference.

A few excerpts and quotes worth perusing before you click "Read more" to see the whole thing:

On Peter Akinola:

The Archbishop is weary of being pushed around. The pusher-in-chief, of course, especially since the founding of CANA, has been Akinola. ‘I’ve said to him privately and publicly I don’t think that [CANA] was an appropriate response,’ says Williams. He is also bothered by the unwavering support by Akinola’s church of a proposed Nigerian law, now lapsed, that would have assigned a five-year jail term not only to open homosexuals, but to those who supported them. Williams says he is ‘very unhappy’ about the situation, ‘and I’ve written to the Archbishop about it."

On Gene Robinson:

"Regarding Robinson, one thing I’ve tried to make clear is that my worry about his election was that the Episcopal Church hadn’t made a general principled decision about the blessing of same-sex unions or the ordination of people in public same-sex partnerships. I would think it better had the church actually taken a view on that before moving to the individual case. As it is, someone living in a relationship not theologically officially approved by the church is elected to a bishop — I find that bizarre and puzzling."

On the Episcopal Church's response to the Primates' communique from Dar es Salaam:

TIME: The Anglican primates met in Dar es Salaam in February and made three key recommendations to the American bishops: that they stop ordaining gay bishops and blessing gay unions and that they create a special bishop to serve the needs of conservatives. What happens if they refuse?

Williams: An absolute blanket no to all of this would pose a real problem. We’ve had indications of a cautious yes to part of it.

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We don't have an item. It's just that her name has been appearing all over the place, and we were beginning to feel left out.

Jan Hoffman in the NYTimes details the days and nights of a hospital chaplain in Offering Comfort to the Sick and Blessings to Their Healers. Chaplain Margaret Muncie responds to the spiritual needs of patients and staff. Not a stranger to suffering herself, Muncie offers support, strength and prayers to all who ask. Some excerpts from the article:

At 1 p.m. on a weekday, the emergency department at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in Upper Manhattan is in full cry, with bays crowded, patients on stretchers lining the hallways, and paramedics bringing in more sick people. Time for the Rev. Margaret A. Muncie to work the floor.
Not shy, this pastor with the clerical collar, the Ann Taylor blazer and the cheerful insistence of one whose own mother called her a steamroller. Among the first women ordained an Episcopal priest and a self-described “Caucasian minority,” she’s an odd bird among the ethnically diverse staff and especially the patients, most of them black or Latino. But she keeps pecking her head behind curtains, parting gatherings of worried family members, impervious to startled looks of suspicion.
“Hi, I’m Peggy Muncie, a hospital chaplain,” she says. “Would you like a visit?”...

The chaplain is also expected to minister to the hospital staff. As Chaplain Muncie, 59, makes her way throughout St. Luke’s with a painstaking limp, she chats easily with doctors and nurses. She has sat with an intern who sobbed uncontrollably after pronouncing her first death and prayed with a ward clerk whose mother was in intensive care.
Every year, the chaplain performs a Blessing of the Hands. She wheels a cart adorned with a tablecloth, flowers, a bowl and an MP3 player. Surgeons, nurses, aides crowd around as she dips their hands in water, blessing their healing work. ...

Her core belief about healing, says Chaplain Muncie, is animated by Psalm 121: My help cometh from the Lord, who made heaven and earth — spirit and body; faith and medicine. In 1996, doctors found a benign tumor in her brain the size of a tennis ball. The day after it was removed, she had a stroke. Her right side became paralyzed.
"I was frightened and mad," she says, over a hasty salad. "But mostly I worried about my husband and daughters: What about them?"
So many people prayed for her. She was not allowed to abandon hope, not through the years of pain and physical therapy that reduced the paralysis to a lurching limp, thanks to a device she was recently fitted for — “an electronic doohickey, my own little miracle.”
She hitches up a pants-leg to show off the gadget, a neurostimulator. “I walk faster now,” she says. “I’m the kick-butt chaplain.” The experience deeply informs her ministry. “In Scripture it says, ‘Get up from your bed and walk, your faith has made you well,’ ” she continues.
“Well doesn’t mean perfect. But wholeness and healing can happen, even when there is still brokenness on the outside,” she adds, tears spilling. “I’m more whole now than 12 years ago. But I still walk a little funny.”

Read it all here

George Ghanem, a Fulbright Scholar at George Washington University, is an Arab Christian. He speaks plaintively and honestly about life as a Christian in the Holy Land, and about how all the violence there has affected Palestinian Christians. The Centreville, Va., resident volunteers with the Holy Land Christian Solidarity Cooperative, appearing at churches in D.C., Maryland and Virginia with nativity scenes, crosses, and other items, all handcarved from olivewood.

Robin Farmer writes about Ghanem in this morning's Richmond Times Dispatch, available on the website inRich.com:

"Part of our ministry is also to publicize our story to the Christian churches in the USA to tell them what's happening to the Christians of Bethlehem and Jerusalem. They need your help," he said.

"There are no sources of income for them. This is not for them to get rich, just to provide daily bread.

"The Holy Land used to have 3 million tourists every year. These days there may be a thousand every year and they are individuals," said Ghanem, who plans to sell the carvings tomorrow at Richmond's St. Thomas' Episcopal Church (3602 Hawthorne Ave.) from 9 a.m. to noon.

Most of the Arab Christians in the Holy Land are either planning to leave or thinking of leaving, said Al Janssen, author of "Secret Believers: What Happens When Muslims Believe in Christ."

"With what's happening there, in another 10 years there could be zero-Christian population in that area," said Janssen.

"Bethlehem is enclosed by a huge wall. Nowadays if tourists want to go to the manger square where Jesus supposedly was born, they have to go through a checkpoint surrounded by a 25-foot wall. It's not exactly the most inviting place to go."

Janssen recalled an Arab Christian businessman who added 30 rooms to his hotel before 2000 in anticipation of strong tourism.

"When I visited him a couple years ago, only one person was staying there. He was desperate to get out. No way he can make a living."

Ghanem said about 100 families leave the Bethlehem area annually. He estimates the Christian population in the Holy Land is less than 2 percent compared with 30 percent last century.

Ghanem is asking churches that are interested in his ministry to contact him at (703) 994-0578.

He's surprised to learn so few people know about the plight of Palestinian Christians.

The whole thing is here.

The violent death of Episcopal seminarian Jonathan Daniels' was remembered Saturday by 200 people who braved in 103-degree heat to honor the white seminary student who gave up his life to save a black teenage girl 42 years ago, according to a report in the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser. A student of the Episcopal Divinity School, Daniels answered the call of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders for the church to become more involved in the struggle for civil rights. Daniels was killed on August 20, 1965 by a shotgun blast fired by an Lowndes County special sheriffs deputy at a small convenience store where Daniels and several other civil rights activists had gone following their release from the Lowndes County Jail, where they spent a week behind bars on charges related to a protest in Fort Deposit.

Episcopalians were joined Saturday by adherents of other faiths from throughout Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Mississippi, who paid their respect to Daniels and the civil rights cause under a blistering sun.

Jerry McGee of Destin, Fla., recited a Biblical passage about "giving your life for another," something Daniels did without question when he stepped in front of 16-year-old Ruby Sales to protect her and take the fatal shotgun blast.

"That's why I wanted to come here and honor him," said McGee. "He gave the greatest gift he could possible give -- his life."

The Rev. Polk Van Zandt of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Selma said Daniels has been given a "Black Letter Day," which sets aside a day each year to honor his memory.

Van Zandt said others given "Black Letter Days" include nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale and author C.S. Lewis, but added that Saturday's commemoration was "more than just about him."

"This is also about all the martyrs of Alabama," said Van Zandt, who alluded to honors bestowed Saturday on several others who were killed during the civil rights era.

Also included in the commemoration were four girls killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham and Viola Liuzzo, who was shot to death by Ku Klux Klansmen in Lowndes County a few months before Daniels was killed

Daniels was a native of Keene, New Hampshire, and a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute. The VMI archives writes about Daniels in this way:

In August 1965 Daniels and 22 others were arrested for participating in a voter rights demonstration in Fort Deposit, Alabama, and transferred to the county jail in nearby Hayneville. Shortly after being released on August 20, Richard Morrisroe, a Catholic priest, and Daniels accompanied two black teenagers, Joyce Bailey and Ruby Sales, to a Hayneville store to buy a soda. They were met on the steps by Tom Coleman, a construction worker and part-time deputy sheriff, who was carrying a shotgun. Coleman aimed his gun at sixteen year old Ruby Sales; Daniels pushed her to the ground in order to protect her, saving her life. The shotgun blast killed Daniels instantly; Morrisroe was seriously wounded. When he heard of the tragedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "One of the most heroic Christian deeds of which I have heard in my entire ministry was performed by Jonathan Daniels."

In the years since his death, Daniels' selfless act has been recognized in many ways. Two books have been written about his life, and a documentary was produced in 1999. The Episcopal Church added the date of his death to its Calendar of Lesser Feasts and Fasts, and in England's Canterbury Cathedral, Daniels name is among the fifteen honored in the Chapel of Martyrs.

At VMI, the Board of Visitors voted in 1997 to establish the Jonathan M. Daniels '61 Humanitarian Award. The award emphasizes the virtue of humanitarian public service and recognizes individuals who have made significant personal sacrifices to protect or improve the lives of others. The inaugural presentation was made to President James Earl Carter in 2001; the second award was presented to Ambassador Andrew Young in 2006.

In addition, one of only four named archways in the VMI Barracks is dedicated to Daniels, as is a memorial courtyard.

The feast commemorating Jonathan Daniels is August 14

Here are two other remembrances: here and here.

Two brothers, both Episcopal priests, symbolize the difficult choices and strong feelings that grow out of the current struggles in the Episcopal Church. They ministers just miles away from one another. They are deeply committed Christians and Anglicans. Yet Fr. Bill Murdoch of West Newbury, MA, is leaving the Episcopal Church, starting a congregation affiliated with the Anglican Church in Kenya and will be consecrated a missionary bishop of that communion. At the same time, his brother, Brian, serves a church in West Roxbury, also of the Diocese of Massachusetts, and is gay. They both hope that the struggle in the church does not become a division for their family.

According to a feature in the Boston Globe by MIchael Paulson, Bill sees the issue as a matter of Biblical interpretation, saying that he and no one in his breakaway parish is opposed to gay people. "Intolerance and abusive behavior toward gay people is abhorrent to Christ, the Gospel, and his church," he said. "Hostility toward gay people is a sin. It's prohibited by any Christian pastor, period."

But Brian, wonders "what he (Bill) would do if my partner and I went to Kenya for the consecration and were jailed," he said, referring to the fact that homosexuality is illegal in Kenya.

Two brother-priests, unable to resolve a deep disagreement in the way they interpret the Bible, find themselves ministering just a few miles apart and yet divided by an ocean. Despite their shared commitment to follow Jesus and uphold the rituals and traditions of Anglican Christianity, they are now members of rival camps in an unusual intradenominational battle and are trying to make sure it doesn't become an intrafamily fight too.

"I am less bugged now than I have been at times," Brian Murdoch said in an interview at his parish, Emmanuel Episcopal, a tiny 19th-century church in a West Roxbury neighborhood. "He's my brother. I have a lot of memories that have been good growing up, and those stand. And I know we'll be helping one another get heavenly aid the rest of our days. And it's not going to change how we cut the pie at the table."

Bill Murdoch, who since 1993 has been the rector of All Saints Episcopal in West Newbury, but is planning soon to launch All Saints Anglican at a former Catholic parish in Amesbury, offered a similar assessment.

"My brother and I love each other and always will," he said by e-mail. "My family and I love Brian and have always been proud of his service to others for the sake of the Gospel and the many, many people Brian has loved in the name of Christ. The pain of our disagreement over this issue will not change my love for him."

This story in the Globe highlights what many in the Diocese already knew:

Although many Episcopal priests in the Diocese of Massachusetts know the Murdoch brothers and although Brian is out as a gay man in his parish, this is the first time either has talked about the other publicly. Both brothers were reluctant to talk, and Bill declined to do so in any detail, but Brian consented to an interview, saying he had decided he was willing to go public after reading a story in the Globe last month in which Bill referred to homosexuality as a sin and decried the influence of the "gay agenda" on the Episcopal Church.

Read the rest.

Brooke Astor, Episcopalian and NYC's most gracious philanthropist, died Monday at the age of 105. According to The Rev. Paul Woodrum of Challwood Studios, when she gave money to a project, however, small, she would always go visit the people receiving it and see how it was being used.

According to the New York Times,

she had a great deal of fun giving money away as it grew over time into the hundreds of millions. With a wink and a sly smile, she liked to quote Dolly Levi in Thornton Wilder’s play “The Matchmaker,” saying, “Money is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around.”

It was Mrs. Astor who decided that because most of the Astor fortune had been made in New York real estate, it should be spent in New York, for New Yorkers. Grants supported the city’s museums and libraries, its boys’ and girls’ clubs, homes for the elderly and other institutions and programs.

She made it her duty to evaluate for herself every organization or group that sought help from the Vincent Astor Foundation. In her chauffeur-driven Mercedes-Benz, she traveled all over New York to visit the tenements and churches and neighborhood programs she was considering for foundation grants. Many times a welcoming lunch awaited her on paper plates and plastic folding tables set up for the occasion. She would exclaim over what she called the “delicious sauces”: deli mustard and pickle relish.

For her forays around the city, she dressed as she did when she joined the ladies who lunch at East Side bistros: a finely tailored suit or a designer dress, a hat in any weather, a cashmere coat when it was cool and, in her last years, an elegant cane, her one apparent concession to age. “If I go up to Harlem or down to Sixth Street, and I’m not dressed up or I’m not wearing my jewelry, then the people feel I’m talking down to them,” she said. “People expect to see Mrs. Astor, not some dowdy old lady, and I don’t intend to disappoint them.”

She could talk to anyone as she made her rounds, offering encouragement to a child working at a library computer, counseling a mother about the importance of reading. To a janitor at a branch library — and she tried to visit every branch — she might give a word of thanks “for keeping this place so clean.” She was thrilled when the Bronx Zoo named a baby elephant in her honor.

Read more here and here.

Services for Mrs. Astor are to be held at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, 5th Ave., NYC

The LA Times has a feature this week on a Denver pilot who takes "faith leaders from all walks of life" on helicopter rides to help them see their communities in a wider light.

This is not just any helicopter. Christened Prayer One, it lifts monks and rabbis, imams and pastors, and ordinary people of faith up over Denver each Monday morning, up into a new perspective on life and love and God. Or so Hastings' friends tell him. Several have taken a ride on Prayer One; they've called it an amazing spiritual stretch. That seems worth a few clammy moments. Hastings, 47, squeezes into the front seat. Gently, steadily, Prayer One lifts into a sky of the most serene blue.

Prayer One was born two years ago, after amateur stunt pilot Jeff Puckett took the Rev. Tom Melton, a friend, for an aerial spin around Denver. Looking down, Melton felt his vision expand. He'd been so focused on his wealthy suburban congregation, so proud of how his flock had grown. Now he saw, all at once, how insular he'd been.

The multimillion-dollar custom homes in his community of Greenwood Village made barely a ripple on the topography that unfurled below. The grand estates with their vast gardens merged right into blocks of blank apartment buildings and regiments of look-alike suburban homes, each planted on a narrow strip of green.

"Looking at the city from 500 feet, you don't see walls or neighborhoods. It's all knit together," Melton says. "I started wondering, how can we minister to the whole city?"

Days later, he hit upon an answer:

You minister to the city, he decided, by taking the city's ministers to the air.

Melton, 58, started by inviting a few friends on Puckett's aerial tour. Word spread quickly, and soon faith leaders from all walks of life began asking for a ride. Some claimed to have visions as they flew. Some wept at the beauty below. Others used the time to pray, bathing the city in blessings from above.

Read the whole thing here.

Shortly after the Rev. Zachariah Jok Char--one of Sudan's "lost boys" who walked hundreds of miles to escape strife in that country--was ordained to the priesthood in western Michagan, we covered a write-up on him here. Today, he's profiled in the New York Times, and the article shows what he's been doing since his ordainment.

Mr. Char has taken on a burden, as he ministers to his people while attending college and working at a meat-processing plant, both full time. His work as a priest makes it possible for the Sudanese church members to receive communion and have their baptisms, weddings and funerals in Dinka, their language.

Occupying a block in the city’s most affluent neighborhood, Grace Episcopal was former President Gerald Ford’s place of worship. As coffee hour for an English-language service ended one Sunday, the drums, shakers and a cappella singing of the 11:30 Dinka service filtered into the churchyard.

There is no program for the service, no organ music. Hymnals and prayer books in Dinka are in the first several rows of the large sanctuary. Songs rise from one or two people and are taken up by everyone else. Yet those familiar with the Anglican liturgy could follow the service and might recognize, even in Dinka, the solemnity of the Lord’s Prayer.

“It’s very powerful, very meaningful to come together and worship in your mother tongue,” said Mayen Wol, 42, a leader in the congregation who came to the United States years before the Lost Boys. “We have common problems: your brother was killed yesterday, your sister raped, your father killed. Through gathering, we encourage each other, through prayer.”

The arrival of the Sudanese immigrants at Grace Episcopal four years ago has changed the way some other congregants understand faith.

“I don’t know how a 5-year-old could have walked across a burning desert: there is something biblical to it,” Nancy Tweddale, a junior warden at the church, said of Mr. Char. “He remembered what he heard in Sunday school, that God was with him. If I saw my friends falling and dying around me, or being killed by animals, I would wonder if I weren’t very alone.

Char talks about his experience in a video from the Times, also at the link. It's all here.

Time Magazine has a fascinating report about the spiritual life of Mother Teresa. Based on a series of letters from Mother Teresa to her confessor and superiors that is about to be published by a supporter of her sainthood, Time reports that Mother Teresa had a long crisis of faith that began almost as soon as she began her ministry to the poor of Calcutta:

On Dec. 11, 1979, Mother Teresa, the "Saint of the Gutters," went to Oslo. Dressed in her signature blue-bordered sari and shod in sandals despite below-zero temperatures, the former Agnes Bojaxhiu received that ultimate worldly accolade, the Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance lecture, Teresa, whose Missionaries of Charity had grown from a one-woman folly in Calcutta in 1948 into a global beacon of self-abnegating care, delivered the kind of message the world had come to expect from her. "It is not enough for us to say, 'I love God, but I do not love my neighbor,'" she said, since in dying on the Cross, God had "[made] himself the hungry one — the naked one — the homeless one." Jesus' hunger, she said, is what "you and I must find" and alleviate. She condemned abortion and bemoaned youthful drug addiction in the West. Finally, she suggested that the upcoming Christmas holiday should remind the world "that radiating joy is real" because Christ is everywhere — "Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor we meet, Christ in the smile we give and in the smile that we receive."

Yet less than three months earlier, in a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, that is only now being made public, she wrote with weary familiarity of a different Christ, an absent one. "Jesus has a very special love for you," she assured Van der Peet. "[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak ... I want you to pray for me — that I let Him have [a] free hand."

The two statements, 11 weeks apart, are extravagantly dissonant. The first is typical of the woman the world thought it knew. The second sounds as though it had wandered in from some 1950s existentialist drama. Together they suggest a startling portrait in self-contradiction — that one of the great human icons of the past 100 years, whose remarkable deeds seemed inextricably connected to her closeness to God and who was routinely observed in silent and seemingly peaceful prayer by her associates as well as the television camera, was living out a very different spiritual reality privately, an arid landscape from which the deity had disappeared.

And in fact, that appears to be the case. A new, innocuously titled book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday), consisting primarily of correspondence between Teresa and her confessors and superiors over a period of 66 years, provides the spiritual counterpoint to a life known mostly through its works. The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever — or, as the book's compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, "neither in her heart or in the eucharist."

That absence seems to have started at almost precisely the time she began tending the poor and dying in Calcutta, and — except for a five-week break in 1959 — never abated. Although perpetually cheery in public, the Teresa of the letters lived in a state of deep and abiding spiritual pain. In more than 40 communications, many of which have never before been published, she bemoans the "dryness," "darkness," "loneliness" and "torture" she is undergoing. She compares the experience to hell and at one point says it has driven her to doubt the existence of heaven and even of God. She is acutely aware of the discrepancy between her inner state and her public demeanor. "The smile," she writes, is "a mask" or "a cloak that covers everything." Similarly, she wonders whether she is engaged in verbal deception. "I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God — tender, personal love," she remarks to an adviser. "If you were [there], you would have said, 'What hypocrisy.'" Says the Rev. James Martin, an editor at the Jesuit magazine America and the author of My Life with the Saints, a book that dealt with far briefer reports in 2003 of Teresa's doubts: "I've never read a saint's life where the saint has such an intense spiritual darkness. No one knew she was that tormented." Recalls Kolodiejchuk, Come Be My Light's editor: "I read one letter to the Sisters [of Teresa's Missionaries of Charity], and their mouths just dropped open. It will give a whole new dimension to the way people understand her."

Read the article--as well as excerpts from the new book here.

What are we to make of all this? Does Mother Teresa's perserverance in good work during this time of spiritual crisis actually show a rather deep and abiding faith, rather than the lack of faith?

This is the story of Fr. Rick Schark, and how the experience of grieving the most profound of personal losses started him on a spiritual journey, a new spiritual home in the Episcopal Church, and eventually to ministry to a parish divided. Written by Susan Ager of the Detroit Free Press, it describes how Schark is known as the peacemaker priest in his small town Michigan parish.

Everyone else met his story with words, pointless words, like "God needed more flowers in heaven."

Instead, Kristi Guzik said, "Wow, what a blow." Then she listened.

"It broke my heart," she says now, "but I didn't run out the door."

They talked for hours, every day for weeks, at his home, where his lost family's photos graced his mantel. At McDonald's. At the beach. At the diner where she poured his coffee.

Three months later, Rick Schark took Kristi as his wife, and she took him as her husband, a soulmate she never thought she'd find. He was 42. She was 24.

They married in Oscoda, in an Episcopal church he found while shopping for a place to plant his seedling spirituality.

His dead wife's family couldn't understand. They said, "It's only been two years." He answered: "No, it's been 750 days and nights."

Since they married a decade ago, Rick and Kristi have been apart for only two nights. When he felt a call to the ministry, she followed him to a seminary in Ontario.

Finally, two years ago, she followed him to a troubled church in Lexington, a small resort town on Lake Huron.

It is his first posting. He is 51.

Everyone in the congregation knows his story, and considers his experience a rare gift. He has lived one second at a time through a long, dark night of the soul and emerged, led by the mystery of God to this place.

"I remember wishing," he says, "that I could meet somebody who had lost as much I did. I wanted to know they survived.

"I want to be that person now for someone else."

Read the rest.

James McGreevy, former governor of New Jersey and currently a student at General Theological Seminary, writes with compassion and a prayer for Larry Craig,his family, and the tide of history.

My gut wrenched when I read of Sen. Larry Craig's bathroom arrest. I remembered my own late-night encounter with the law at a Garden State Parkway rest stop following a political dinner in north Jersey.

I pulled into the rest stop, parked my car, flashed my headlights, which was "the signal," and waited. Glancing in my rearview mirror, I saw a state trooper approaching. I desperately tried to convince the trooper of my innocence, showing him my former prosecutor's badge, a gift from the office when I left. The trooper radioed his office and returned. "I never want to see you here again," he said. I survived for another day

I was in my late 20s. It would be another 25 years before my parallel lives collided and I was coerced out of the "closet."

Why do grown men in their 20s, or their 60s, do such things? I can answer only for me.

McGreevy prays that Larry Craig and his loving family come to peace with his truth, whatever that may be. To those who judge him harshly, I ask that they fill their hearts with compassion and equanimity. He prays that the tide of American history continues to sweep toward the inevitable expansion of freedom that recognizes the worth and dignity of every individual -- and that mine is the last generation that is required to choose between affairs of the heart and elected office.

Read it all here

Bishop John Shelby Spong has written an open letter to Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury that rehashes old complaints that have been extensively aired elsewhere and seems calculated to give offense. It is perhaps best seen as an act of unconscious self-marginalization (not to mention bad manners.) Spong, like N. T. Wright, has become one of those figures whose public utternances frequently do more to bolster the cause of his adversaries than his allies.

If one were attempting to poison the atmosphere when the archbishop and the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops gather in New Orleans on September 20-21, this is the letter one would write. Its publication places a burden on Episcopal bishops who favor the full inclusion of the baptized in all ministries of the Church, and continued membership in the Anglican Communion. They now must make it clear that Archbishop Rowan will receive a warmer welcome than this letter suggests.

Read more »

Early this morning, Politico author Andrew Glass wrote a tribute to Michael Deaver, who passed away Aug. 18. Deaver's funeral had been scheduled for today to allow people interested in attending to return from vacations and whatnot. No one, least of all Deaver, realized just how many people would want to come:

Before Michael Deaver, the longtime aide and image maestro to Ronald Reagan, died on Aug. 18 of pancreatic cancer at age 69, he requested that his memorial service take place at St. John’s Episcopal Church.

Established in 1815, it stands across Lafayette Square from the White House and is known as “The Church of the Presidents.”

Deaver’s family made the arrangements in keeping with his wish. They also delayed the service until the first Thursday after Labor Day, when much of official Washington would be back from the traditional vacation period.

They soon found, however, that Deaver, a well-known figure on the Washington scene since 1981, had many more friends and admirers – including Nancy Reagan, the former first lady – who wished to attend than St. John’s could accommodate. St. John’s seats only several hundred people.

So the service was shifted to Washington National Cathedral Thursday at 11 a.m.

No news reports have come out about attendance at the funeral, but Glass's full article provides a run-down of who spoke. You can read it here.

The New York Times has news today that the noted children's author and active episcopal layperson and speaker had died at the age of 88. All of us here at the Café give thanks for her life and ministry

"Ms. L’Engle (pronounced LENG-el) was best known for her children’s classic, “A Wrinkle in Time,” which won the John Newbery Award as the best children’s book of 1963. By 2004, it had sold more than 6 million copies, was in its 67th printing and was still selling 15,000 copies a year.

Her works — poetry, plays, autobiography and books on prayer — were deeply, quixotically personal. But it was in her vivid children’s characters that readers most clearly glimpsed her passionate search for the questions that mattered most. She sometimes spoke of her writing as if she were taking dictation from her subconscious.

“Of course I’m Meg,” Ms. L’Engle said about the beloved protagonist of “A Wrinkle in Time.”

The “St. James Guide to Children’s Writers” called Ms. L’Engle “one of the truly important writers of juvenile fiction in recent decades.” Such accolades did not come from pulling punches: “Wrinkle” is one of the most banned books because of its treatment of the deity.

“It was a dark and stormy night,” it begins, repeating the line of a 19th- century novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, and presaging the immortal sentence that Snoopy, the inspiration-challenged beagle of the Peanuts cartoon, would type again and again. After the opening, “Wrinkle,” quite literally, takes off. Meg Murray, with help from her psychic baby brother, uses time travel and extrasensory perception to rescue her father, a gifted scientist, from a planet controlled by the Dark Thing. She does so through the power of love.

The book used concepts that Ms. L’Engle said she had plucked from Einstein’s theory of relativity and Planck’s quantum theory, almost flaunting her frequent assertion that children’s literature is literature too difficult for adults to understand. She also characterized the book as her refutation of ideas of German theologians."

Read the full two page article here.

The AP story is here.

Our old friend the Salty Vicar, who gave up blogging to have a life, has written a perceptive response to Bishop JohnShelby Spong's recent open letter to Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury.

He writes:

The issues of the U.S. Episcopal Church, I suspect, are not the issues of the Anglican Communion. My concerns include things like how am I going to pay for my secretary or the air conditioning or my after school program, and why isn’t anyone coming to my cool ultra-progressive church? It isn’t that people don’t approve of me or my parish; in my area everyone knows where we stand and they love what we’re doing. They’re just in a time and money crunch, as so many of us are today.

Gay rights is just one of many issues that needs work in a hypercapitalist country. And in fact, I believe we’re ahead of the game in that department. Good leaders in the Episcopal Church do not worry about sexuality—we’ve already decided that gay people are a full part of the church. Now how about turning our attention to some other challenges, like the growing blight of mega-churches and the budget shortfalls that make it tougher and tougher to pay for the basic upkeep of church buildings?

Spong is wrong to assume that this fight is Rowan’s. The fight in the Episcopal Church is ours. It’s great that the Archbishop is coming, the Archbishop is coming. To be honest, that’s all he needed to do. But the work that has to be done is here. And we don’t need him to do it for us, or to give us the thumbs up.

Deacon Ormonde Plater remembers The Rev. Bill Richardson at his blog. He writes:

A Saint has died: The Rev. William P. Richardson, 98, rector of St George's, New Orleans, from 1953-1976, died peacefully last night at 10:48 p.m. A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at St. George’s on Monday, Oct. 8, at noon.

Among the gay community in the United States, Bill Richardson is honored as a hero.

On June 24, 1973, fire broke out in a gay bar, the Upstairs Lounge, at Iberville and Chartres in the Vieux Carré. The patrons were trapped behind barred doors and windows of the second-story lounge. Thirty-two died, and many others were injured.

To the Editor:

Thank you for the Spring 1991 issue. It is excellent.

I have a some additional information for you concerning your article "Closeted Gay Bishop Dies of AIDS." In 1971 I attended a summer seminar at General Theological Seminary on "Homosexuality, Women's Liberation and Communal Living." I returned home to St. George's Church here in New Orleans where I was rector, determined to do all in my power to support lesbians and gay men.

The local Metropolitan Community Church met in our chapel for some months. Then they found their own small church. From time to time I attended their afternoon service, and I came to know their minister, Rev. Bill Larsen, quite well. He often came to see me regarding their scrambled liturgy and what to do about it.

The night of June 24, 1971 (sic) some 30 or more members of the MCC group and friends were at an upstairs bar. A man who was drunk fire-bombed the stairs. The windows had iron bars over them. As a result nearly all those there were burned to death. My phone rang at 3 a.m. telling me of this. I was grieved greatly, for included among those burned to death was Bill Larsen, my friend.

Next morning a member of the MCC called to ask if they could have a memorial service that evening at St. George's. I agreed, providing they would not make a big splash over it. The Rev. Troy Perry [Founder and Moderator of MCC] flew in that evening and assisted with the service. Some 80-90 persons attended. I warned the TV people not to take pictures, and asked the reporters to play it low-key. They did.

Bishop Iveson B. Noland, who was later killed in a plane crash in New York, phoned me early the next morning. He said, "Bill, this is the Bishop. Have you read the morning paper?" I said, "Yes, Bishop, I have." "Is it true that the service was at St. George's Episcopal Church?" "Yes, Bishop, it was." "Why didn't they have it in their own church?" he asked. I replied, "For the simple reason their own small church holds about 18 persons. Without any publicity we had over 80 present." "What am I to say when people call my office?" I replied, "You can say anything you wish, Bishop, but do you think Jesus would have kept these people out of His church?"

I heard later the Bishop had a hundred calls, and I got hate calls and letters. Only one member of our vestry supported me. Later, I was stopped on the street by many persons thanking me for doing such a Christian thing.

Later that week, I was asked if we could have another memorial service the next Sunday afternoon at St. George's. I had to decline for I was just leaving for a month's trip to India to visit friends, and I knew I would have to be present for such a service. It was then that the late Bishop Finis Crutchfield offered the Rampart St. Methodist Church for that extra service.

I shall be grateful if you will insert this in your next issue. I am still very active in lesbian/gay affairs, though our Integrity group eventually folded. I have spoken several times before the City Council and before our Diocesan Convention regarding lesbian/gay issues, but to little avail. But I'm not giving up!

Cordially,

(The Rev.) William P. Richardson, Jr.
New Orleans, LA

Read it all here.

The Rev. David Salmon, first traditional chief of the Athabascan people, Episcopal priest, and a widely respected spiritual leader, was buried Monday near his home in Chalkyitsik, Alaska.

The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports:

Hundreds of mourners flew to the small Interior community from villages and towns around the state to pay their respects to Salmon. A dozen white-gowned Episcopal ministers gave final blessings after Salmon's handmade wooden coffin was lowered into the ground.

Salmon was an ordained Episcopal minister and had been the Interior's first traditional chief since 2003. The position is an honorary, nonpolitical office and is held in high esteem.

"He was a very humble, humble individual. He was a very giving man," said Steve Ginnis, former Tanana Chiefs president. "He wanted no fanfare, recognition or praise but to have us praise the Lord."

Doyon President Orie Williams said Salmon was one of the most spiritual men he ever met and was never critical.

"He never brought negativity with him. He was always positive. You could never go to school enough years to know what this man knew," Williams said. "He was truly an Indian chief long before people called him one."

The Rev. Scott Fisher, Rector of St. Matthew's, Fairbanks attended the ceremony and tells some of the history of The Rev. David Salmon and Bishop Gordon and the connection to the passage of what was Title III, Canon 9.

Back last night from Chalkyitsik, a little village 60 miles north of the Arctic Circle, about 200 miles northeast of Fairbanks. I was up there for the funeral/burial of the Rev. David Salmon, who died there at home last Thursday. David was 95 years old and the Traditional First Chief of the entire Interior region of Alaska. And an amazing guy. He was a link to very very Old Stories & tradition. He could remember stories from his Grandfather of when the first missionaries (Anglican missionaries traveling with the Huds