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Friday,
30 March 2001
Communication with the Family
This is the week we will remember how we greeted CH Gerry Blackburn's
arrival with a cake and hoop-la. We're just glad he's here and it
felt especially good to have all three directors, David Henritzy
for Health, Jackie Means for Prisons, and now, Gerry, for the Military
in one room for a staff meeting. Among other things, I have continued
to press one, simple goal in these gatherings: give me a reliable,
nose-by-nose tally of everybody. In these days of databases you'd
think that was simple. I had thought it was and recalled when a
merciful First Sergeant said to me, a very green Second Lieutenant,
"Sir, above all, account for your people." In this Office it isn't
so easy, though, since the information is only as accurate as the
last report from the field.
So, we started to count and here are some results:
| Army |
|
Active
Duty |
25 |
National
Guard |
39 |
Reserves |
34 |
Seminary |
1 |
| |
|
| Coast
Guard |
1 |
| |
|
| Navy |
|
Active Duty (5
of which serve with the Marines) |
23 |
Reserves
(active) |
16 |
Seminary |
4 |
| |
|
| Air
Force |
|
Active
Duty |
12 |
Reserves |
18 |
National
Guard |
24 |
Seminary |
1 |
| |
|
| Civil
Air Patrol |
61 |
| |
|
| Healthcare |
|
Veterans
Administration |
66 |
Assembly of
Episcopal Healthcare Chaplains |
175 |
General
Healthcare |
18 |
| |
|
|
Prisons |
7 |
| |
|
|
Retired |
380 |
These
numbers do not reveal enough about the lives of our chaplains. How
are they doing? You have read my statements about connecting through
our webpage and now, more proactively, with "ChaplainQuikNotes",
but these systems can fail us. Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold says
there is an irony to Internet communication. Just when we can electronically
message everyone with such ease, more personal, face-to-face contact
is needed. This is one reason the Primates of the Anglican Communion
have abandoned their triennial meetings in favor of an annual gathering.
In a time when intense differences are occurring over sexuality
and the jurisdiction of irregularly ordained bishops is a prime
topic of interest, more frequent meetings must be scheduled. Consequently,
pastoral letters from the Primate's meeting and the House of Bishops
should be read as ultimately reliable without spin or inference.
They are products of "real time."
Given this I was alarmed when VA Chaplain Mike Carr said he hadn't
heard much from this Office lately! David and I checked and re-checked
the "system." Surely Mike was nestled in our cyber arms! Well, maybe
not. It turns out that he is in the midst of moving into a new house
and it's hard to contact him. What do we do with this normal development?
This brings me back to that "we're all together staff meeting."
We have a bonanza in the people who support this Episcopacy and
it makes sense to use their capabilities when they are visiting
anywhere in the country. Face-to-face time is essential. Recently
CH Jackie Means visited CH Lee Dudley, USA, at Ft. Bliss, Texas.
Jackie was travelling to a prison outside El Paso so I asked her
to "look in on Lee." In my travels I had not been able to stop by
and it concerned me; the Dudleys had been at Bliss for over a year
after a Germany tour. Jackie took the Dudleys out to dinner and
had a high old time. That's all she did and that was enough. Jackie
doesn't pretend to be up on military matters, but she can listen
and convey our love and support to this Army chaplain on a remote
assignment. This initiative in no way slows the frequency of my
visits but it does multiply the effect. We've discussed this in
staff meetings and David and Gerry are eager to make "check-in"
contacts too. Some of these contacts might be an invitation for
coffee or a shared sandwich at the airport.
By the way, Mike Carr contacted us by Fax with the proud news
of being recognized as "The Chaplain of the Month" in the whole
V. A. system. On the webpage version of this "Notebook" we caught
a proud staff admiring the certificate. +gep
23
March 2001
(Gregory the Illuminator)
My Dear Sisters and Brothers:
This is the Pastoral Letter written as a summary of the recent House
of Bishops meeting held at Kanuga Conference Center, North Carolina,
9-14 March 2001. I commend it to you and ask for a reading before
your congregation on the Fifth Sunday of Lent, 1 April 2001. I know
some of your worship gatherings are not suited for that due to denominational
mixtures and time imperatives due to training, so please use your
best judgement on how to convey the information. Above all, please
embrace this as a unifying exercise knowing that you are included
in the Councils of this worldwide Communion.
May these Lenten days prepare us for the Easter dawn.
Please know that you are in my prayers.
Faithfully,
+George
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Pastoral Letter to the Episcopal Church
The Fifth
Sunday in Lent
Sunday, April 1,
2001 |
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The Bishops of the Episcopal Church meet twice each
year for prayer, consultation, mutual support. and learning,
for the good of the church and the world we are called to
serve. We gathered for our spring retreat this year from March
9-14 in the ancient mountains of the Appalachian chain in
Western North Carolina. Our meeting immediately followed the
meeting of the Primates, the leaders of the 38 member churches
of our Anglican Communion, presided over by the Archbishop of
Canterbury. We were blessed by the presence of the Archbishop
of Canterbury for two days, and by the participation of the
Primates of Central Africa and Papua New Guinea. These brother
Christians were a reminder of our participation in a
70-million-member worldwide Anglican family.
During
these days we have been united through prayer to you, God's
beloved people. With thankful hearts for the Spirit of Christ
moving among us, we send you this pastoral letter, to be read
in every congregation on Sunday, April
1. |
Dearly Beloved in Christ:
Grace and peace be with you in these days of Lent as we journey
with our Lord up to Jerusalem and through the cross into the joy
of Easter and the new life of the resurrection.
Our retreat has made us freshly aware of the boundless love of God
and the gift of our belovedness in Christ. We have become mindful
of how God has been leading us into deeper communion as your bishops
and into a renewed awareness of our call to mission. The words of
the prophet Isaiah speak to us powerfully, "I am about to do a new
thing, now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?"
We who are called as bishops to be a sign of unity speak to you
with minds and hearts being united and transformed by the love of
God. Our unity does not mean we are in agreement about all of the
difficult and complex questions before us. It means we have claimed
our oneness in Christ.
We are heartened by the Primates' Pastoral Letter to the Anglican
Communion and their conclusion that - though we live in enormously
diverse settings, and hold a wide variety of perspectives - God
means for us to remain united and to learn from one another in a
spirit of unity and interdependence. The Primates have also called
upon us to provide pastoral care for all in our Communion, as we
grow in Christ's wisdom. We mean to respond faithfully to that call.
We trust in the promise of God to lead us all the more deeply into
the mind of Christ, whose dying and rising makes us free to live
not for ourselves alone but for God.
Our Study together centered on leadership for the purpose of advancing
the mission of tile Church. This mission, as the Catechism of the
Book of Common Prayer tells us, is "to restore all people to unity
with God and each other in Christ." We live in a world urgently
searching for such restoration: spiritually, socially, racially,
and environmentally. As Christians we have been given a word to
speak and a new life to live: God has "reconciled us to himself
through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation"
(11 Corinthians 5: 18). This is the Good News that we proclaim.
This is the work God gives us to do.
Ronald Heifetz, the author of Leadership Without Easy Answers, was
with us. He challenged us to help create an environment in our dioceses
open to a variety of convictions so that faithful ministry and creative
interaction can be sustained within a richness of diverse perspectives.
The objective of such leadership is to build authentic community
ready to be animated by the Spirit to go forward in mission.
We are under no illusions that leading in this way is simple. Each
of us is keenly aware of our weakness and failure, such that repentance
is the necessary preface to our leading. We are humbled by God's
boundless mercy and promise. Our repentance renews us as we are
encouraged by one another. As leaders we are convinced by the Gospel's
deep assurance that every member of the Body of Christ is the beloved
bearer of God's purposes in the world. We are grateful for the many
gifts and capacities entrusted to our church. We are inspired by
the faithful and sacrificial ministries of so many. We are sustained
by your prayers.
As your servants we are determined to put our common call to serve
the mission of Christ above all else. We pledge that we will give
our best energies to the work of restoring all people to unity with
God and one another, because we know that the reconciling power
of God in Christ is ceaselessly at work to overcome all division.
Every concern for truth finds its wellspring in God's love for the
world. Every concern for justice finds its wellspring in God's love.
Every concern for peace finds its wellspring there. We call upon
you to grow in the unity of the Holy Spirit as we together claim
the fullness of our calling to share in God's mission of reconciling
love.
Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies
ahead, let us press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly
call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13:14).
Your servants in Christ,
The Bishops of the Episcopal Church, gathered for the Spring Meeting,
March, 2001
Bishop's Visual Notebook
16 March 2001
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Plans for St. Michael's
Church, Guam
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Young Members of the St. Michael, All Angels Episcopal
Community, Camp Kinser, Okinawa
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Camp Kinser, Okinawa
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Chaplain Gene Zeilfelder,
Korea
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Conference Room at the Demilitarized Zone, Korea
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Chaplain Ira Houck, Ash Wednesday
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Chaplain Bob Lawrence and Megan Grant, Italy
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Prison Ministry Conference, Indianapolis, Indiana
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Mildred
Gonzalez
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Terry
Foster
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Brother
Richard Biernacki, Mrs. Marilyn Blackburn, Chaplain Gerry
Blackburn, Chaplain David Henritzy
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Bishop’s Notebook
3 March, In Korea
Yesterday CH Norm Desrosiers brought Fr. Gene Zeilfelder and
me to the flight line at Osan AFB. Norm is an energetic chaplain
whose infectious attitude for what he’s doing makes ready
connections with his colleagues. It is delightful to be around a
priest who relishes being around people. The pilots spoke with weighty
concern, pointing to an area just below the DMZ where they flew
exercises. As one who was around this in Vietnam, frankly it felt
a little forced. I don’t feel like that anymore. And in a
way I understand the hyper-focus of the chaplain.
Today we journeyed to the DMZ and even if you resist it you can
still hear the echoes of this peninsula’s inconclusive war.
There’s a fair amount of bravado displayed by the security
forces. But when the preparatory briefings included a recent atrocity
of how two G.I.’s were axed to death in 1976 when they tried
to remove a cherry tree in a disputed area, you know that the poison
of the dispute can’t be swept away into past history. What
is astounding is that for a war that ended in 1953 this bad air
is being breathed by soldiers who hadn’t even been born.
It’s hard to characterize the dread one feels along the border
in Korea. I thought of how Carl Gustav Jung wrote chapter after
chapter about cultures giving their destinies over to darkness.
That’s one way of describing it.
The Gospel can be another.
A mere two days after Ash Wednesday and a well-attended service
of the Yongsan Episcopal Community where we heard Jesus urge new
life, new living, we were in a hut with North Korean guards peering
in wondering about our intentions. It was a odd drama: they were
supposed to look in and monitor who was visiting and both sides
avoided real eye contact.
Ours is a ministry on the edge where profound things are exposed
in human nature. We are called to be resourceful, where others might
be astounded.
True, we directly pastor some but God has it in mind for us to set
fear aside, growing to love beyond our limitations. What a genuinely
intriguing opportunity. +gep
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