A Word from the Office of the Bishop Suffragan for Armed Services, Healthcare, and Prison Ministries Current Bishop's Diary Page + 30 June + 8 July + 14 July + 21 July + 27 July Earlier Bishop's Diary Pages + Diary 26 May - 23 June       Bishop’s Diary, 27 July August is filling up yet July isn’t over. I go to Louisiana for a chaplain’s farewell party and a visit to Angola Prison with CH Jackie Means over this weekend. Then in mid August CH Roger Kappel and I journey to Russia for a visit with Bishop Saava of the Russian Orthodox Church and the historic consecration of Moscow’s Cathedral. That occasion will be relatively brief but will set up a series of follow-up trips by teams of our chaplains as we work with our Russian counterparts on suicide prevention in the ranks and other programs. But the big thing is my wife wants me to paint the living room before the month is out. Suggestions on colors, shades, and volunteers are welcome. Angola Prison is a sprawling complex in view of the Mississippi River and was featured in the July 10th Time Magazine. It said, "of the over 5000 men, 86% of them will stay there for life and one dark day." I’ll give you a full report on that Visitation next week. While down in that area I thought I’d check in on some of our other chaplains. I won’t be too far from CH Mickey Bell who is strengthening each day. Serious surgery takes time for healing, so please direct your prayers for patience and thanksgiving. Mick is a great guy and an inspiration to us. We’ve had mixed news reports on promotions from all branches. Some missed the lists this time, others, CH Jeff Seiler and CH Mike Williams, received good news. We give thanks for all. I was writing to a chaplain about this earlier in the week. It is becoming clearer to me that recruitment, formation, support and retention is paramount in this episcopacy. That is not startling, I suppose. But we should always think of it as an organic whole. Too often we try to make up in "support" what we should do in "formation." Our priestly character is being formed even as we serve in the military; it has not gone on vacation. We must find ways when an assignment or moment gets to be a grind, or, provides unparalleled exhilaration—and sooner or later one will—for chaplains to have intentional, reflective moments. "What is Our Lord asking in this time?" Retention does not ipso facto mean promotion, but rather a rightful pride in a quality of service. The military is like life anywhere, sometimes recognition will not be forthcoming even when it plainly should be. When this happens to one of our number it is sometimes the worst of occasions but for us it can be the blessing of servanthood. "So this is how it feels, the unfairness, the indignity of it!" We are called to incarnate these broken moments, to know them, and to pastor others through them. This is preaching to the choir, isn’t it? Sometimes we need to remind each other whose we really are. You are in my prayers, I ask to be in yours. +gep Bishop's Diary, 21 July Back in New York You know the way it is after a long trip, you bring all the luggage into the house and drop it. Maybe you're better at this than I am, but in our family there is a "wandering period" during which items eventually find their rightful places in desks and bureaus. This time some urgency made an assortment of official looking papers rush to the front of the line for sorting. This episcopacy sponsored two pieces of legislation, which will impact the way we approach prison and healthcare work. Now if someone were to write to me-in midsummer-about General Convention business I think my eyes would glaze over. That's the odd thing here, almost as a sleeper, our approach to these two ministries will be revolutionized. The Reports of interest are identified innocuously as "AO79, Create an Association of Episcopal Health Care Groups and Individuals", and, "B001, Prison Task Force." Both place advocacy and the provision of information to congregations as essential additions in the descriptions of prison and healthcare ministry. Where we once we saw the work of this Office as recruiting, endorsing and supporting chaplains as the sole description, now that will change. And it isn't that surprising. The 1979 Prayer Book commends the Faithful to live out Baptismal Covenants meaningfully. Our Church "works" its theology through these liturgies and a succession of generations is now growing up worshipping with this guidance. I recommend that you read the full text of both Reports by calling up, www.ecusa.anglican.org , then to "General Convention", then to the "Index of Resolutions." On another matter, and in the opposite direction, I have received an e-mail message from The Rev. Richard H. Humphrey asking me to promote "Public Safety Ministry" which I am glad to do. Fr. Humphrey would like me to enlist priests to volunteer as chaplains to local police and fire departments. I do so encourage that but hasten to add, as I indicated in the preceding paragraph, that civic involvement of this kind should mobilize the whole population and not just the clergy. On this note it is fitting to refer to one last piece of legislation from General Convention. I was one of the endorsers to "B003, Restorative Justice." I was glad to do it because it embraces the direction we are taking in so many social initiatives where there is not just a clergy prerogative anymore. The term, "Restorative Justice" conveys the necessity to heal the tear in society when crime occurs. What will care for the victim be like, or for the families involved, yes, even for the perpetrator? And what, ultimately, will be the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim? Our justice system is haunted by crimes where revenge and retribution have been meted out yet remain perpetually inconclusive. There has been no redemption and no restoration. This act by our Convention leads us to a new place of wholeness. You may want to read it as well. +gep Bishop's Diary, 14 July, Denver After posting my last entry to you I had second thoughts. Characterizing the Convention as chaotic is not fair to this big, unwieldy, yet earnest gathering. Yesterday Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, in a joint meeting of both the House of Deputies and House of Bishops for budget consideration, called the Convention "a big block party." That seems far more accurate. He also highlighted the aspect of "the connections we all make." The mechanisms that have served this Church for these hundreds of years have an underlying, insistent organizational quality. However during some sittings I'm told everything was nearly deadlocked. Not so at the 73rd version, however. This is due in part to the wit and courtliness of key leaders and to the level of spirituality coming from the daily Eucharists. It may seem odd to attribute success in polity to how adept retiring House of Deputies President Pam Chinnis is on the dais, or, the way Bishop Frank Griswold can bring acuity and a light touch to debate, but it seems so. One veteran deputy at my Communion table (the Eucharist is celebrated amongst 300 tables in a great hall to encourage intimacy especially in sermon reflection) said he thought the Jubilee morning on Thursday was that certain moment when this Convention went from a good gathering to an exceptional one. At that time the Eucharist had additional time, interrupting the productivity of our workday for two hours just to reflect on God's blessings. Legislatively, this meeting will be known by these short summaries: the time we approved a relationship with the Lutheran Church; the time we acknowledged same sex unions as a lifestyle but did not seek to create rites to bless them; and the time we made a timeline for three dioceses to be in compliance with women's ordination. There are certainly more actions that distinguish these two weeks in Denver, but those will stand out in my opinion. Our Episcopacy had some shining moments with a series of Resolutions clarifying Healthcare and Prison Ministries, hosts for our booth from all branches of the services, healthcare, and prison ministries, and a wonderful evening of fellowship at a local restaurant. We'll try to post some pictures after we all get home. I'm stopping off in Milwaukee tomorrow, Saturday, for a brief visit with our hospital chaplains, headed by Mike Stewart and Razz Waff. Thank you for your prayerful support. It was certainly apparent in everything we did. +gep Bishop's Diary, 8 July Denver, Colorado The General Convention is well underway and it eludes any characterization. Maybe because of that this Office has jumped in with both feet. Members of our family from all over the world have journeyed to this City on the edge of the Rocky Mountains. I'm proud of that. As you can imagine with the addition of Prison Ministries our booth now not only presents the traditional Armed Services-Healthcare motif but also has volunteers dressed in mock prison outfits. At first I worried if this display trivialized the condition of persons in confinement but then when we were acknowledged as "a booth not to miss while at Convention" I thought better of it since this could translate into 10,000 visitors a day. Do the ends justify the means? We could debate that for months. I do know that I have already witnessed many, many instances where our story was told to skeptics and even better, recruitments begun. It is a jarring sight, though, to see a prison volunteer in stripes eating popcorn next to CH Carl Andrews donned in his handsome uniform handing out Armed Forces Prayer Books! Somehow it seems to work. The profile of this booth is a metaphor for the Convention. It has all the substance of the Tradition of our Church with unique and rich liturgies every day and serious deliberation of circumstances which face us and the world. Yet it acknowledges that if this many persons representing so much diversity of background and interest all arrive at one place it will be chaotic. It is happy chaos with a veneer of organization, but chaos nonetheless. My time is eaten up by legislative sessions both on the National and International Affairs Committee and of course in the House of Bishops. It is frustrating because it minimizes my contact with our people but we hope to have a get together tonight. I must close now and rush off to a 0730 hours Committee meeting, then on to the day's Eucharist, then to the House of Bishops, back to Committee...you get the picture. I'll try to post more later. My friends, pray for this time, pray for our Church. Thank you for the privilege of representing you. +gep Bishop's Diary, 30 June My trip to Biloxi, Mississippi and Keesler Air Force Base to visit with Mickey, Sandy and Jenny Bell was a glad time. Mickey's surgery was a total success and the pathology report was "benign." Praise God! My time was filled with thanksgivings and at one point we listed the 30 or more persons who were involved before, during and after the 11 hour operation for the Eucharist's "Prayers of the People." Through it all Sandy told me she could actually feel prayers from friends and those she didn't know carrying them through this ordeal. The latest report I got from CH Bill Bischoff was that Mick walks three times a day (around the hall) and that post operative healing was well under way. I ask for your continuing prayers as he strengthens. I have been anticipating a trip to Korea-Japan in late November. Those locales deserve attention on their own but it would also allow me to make good on a promise to be in Guam by St. Andrew's Day, November 30th, and the feast day for one of our missions. (Many do not know that this episcopacy has pastoral oversight for Micronesia because of this propensity for worldwide travel.) Guam is a wonderful place. A paradise, seventeen degrees or so above the equator, time is marked less by seasons and more by the last big typhoon. Even the WWII monuments scattered about the island commemorating how ill-fated Japanese landings failed to scramble up steep hillsides take a back seat to the "trees-stripped-bare" tales of the last, great storm. When I was last there, Father Grove Needham, retired priest of St. John's Church, regaled me one evening about what the tempests were like. He would know, nearly a native, he was a veteran of those hardscrabble days of mission, when the grit and character of the island was imprinted on him or vice versa! "The Church and School were in Quonset huts during one big blow and then some parts of the compound just disappeared." He said this with a dramatic wave of hand toward the cliff and the Pacific beyond. He seemed to delight in a delivery, which invited one to wonder if Shakespeare or Don Quixote was talking. But that twinkle in his eye became manifest when he returned to the School which he founded on assembly days. In procession I watched him pat about every student's head, and, shunning a microphone boomed out, " Let us bless the Lord!" The kids loved it, the adults glowed. I share all of this, because Grove is part of our family and a stalwart example of ever-optimistic missioner. Thank God for him. And I share it because I received the following message today. +gep Dear everyone, Please pray with us for our beloved "Grove" Needham, who died this afternoon, Friday - June 30 at 4:45 P.M. He died very peacefully with me, Lynn Fatsinger, and Rey Fernandez, Jr. holding him, at his home. Nellie also joined in later. You may know a lot of others who should get this message, please connect with them and pass the news. We will be informing you soon about his funeral. Grove had expressed through Lois Skanse that he would want "a regular Episcopal service with the Holy Eucharist, to be followed by cremation and with ashes to be either scattered at sea or put in the Columbarium at St. John the Divine Episcopal Church, Guam." A Thanksgiving/Memorial Service will be planned later. Praise and thanks be to God who has given us Fr. Grove Needham. May the God of hope fill us with all joy and peace in believing through the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen." (Romans 15:13) Tony Gomowad 911 Marine Drive Tumon, Guam 96911 Phone/Fax: 1-671-649-1896 Home: 1-671-649-4757   --return to The Office of the Bishop Suffragan for Armed Services, Healthcare, and Prison Ministries Home Page