Today's a day off

We slept in a little this morning, watched Bruce Springsteen on the TODAY Show and then took the dogs to the dog park. Checked in with my friend Jim whose mother Eleanor is failing and we put her back on the parish prayer list. (Prayers invited from all ya'll, please for Eleanor, Jim and sister Jan.)

Worked a little in the garden and now I'm boarding up for a trip to Trader Joe's, the dry cleaners and PetSmart. But right now I'm just sitting here, websurfing, enjoying an early autumn afternoon with sleeping dogs, cooler weather and the new fountain on our porch that my mother bought me for my birthday in June and we finally got time to get set up last week.




Just a little window into a "manner of life" that's causing such concern to the Anglican Communion these days. Welcome to my world.

I'm working a "real" blog ... a commentary on the week past and the weeks ahead. Don't imagine I'll finish it today -- what with Trader Joe's and the dry cleaners and all -- but it starts out "We hold these truths to be self-evident ..."

I'm not sure where it's going -- I rarely know where I'm going to end up when I start writing which is part of the fun -- but I think it will talk about who we are when we are the best we can be. And I think it will challenge us to think about how far we've fallen from that mark -- that goal of being the best we can be.

For no matter how you "spin" it our bishops were not the best they could be in New Orleans -- they were the best they could bring themselves to be. And that is not a thing to rejoice and be glad in. And this church is not going to be the best it can be until it chooses witness over word games and quits settling for what Elizabeth Kaeton has aptly named as mediocrity.

Will we look back at New Orleans as the moment when the cost of mediocrity became greater than the promise of honesty? I hope so.

Because if it's true that [a] the truth will set you free and [b] freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose then [c] isn't it time to claim those truths we hold self-evident and get on with the work of being the church God has called us to be?

That'll be the work we'll be getting back to -- after a day off, that is.

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