You are so on the mark. As short-timers, we really can’t know the half of a matter that’s been lingering long enough to harden into different sides… when all we know is we’re glad to be here.

And while it just seems so obvious folks need to “just git along”… the matter of moving folks from trench warfare to the love-in is… uh.. tricky.

Prayer and repentance seem like the heart of it.

There’s a good podcast with Bishop Basil here:
http://ancientfaith.com/announcements/matthew_namee_speaks_with_bishop_basil_of_the_antiochian_orthodox_diocese_o/

I don’t remember my name -

You make a very good point. The cold shoulders are everywhere. Sometimes we beat ourselves up here for our reputation… earned and unearned… as if it were the only place. Lutherans, Episcopalians… everyone has these things.

Your note specifically made me think again about the story of the Woman at the Well. Maybe… we just don’t even know the half of it. Thank you.

And yes, prayer helps… thankfully. God will provide.

Your “Harold Hill” speech is priceless… made me laugh, laugh, laugh.
Prayer is good.
God will help y’all.

Dana

I am very sorry for anyone finding themselves coming to other conclusions over things that seem to me to concern bishops far more than those of us folks here in the congregation. My own experience both in my parish and elsewehre is that these things seem so far in the background… I don’t even know they’re there. Some folks go looking for them… I don’t. I like my Bishop, and I’m sure folks will ultimately do the right thing.

I am an orphan on God’s highway
But I’ll share my troubles if you go my way
I have no mother no father
No sister no brother
I am an orphan girl

Been prayin a bit myself.
I travel quite a bit and have been blessed to find a couple of parishes that are like home away from home.
Last week I was there; lookin forward to Pentecost and all the beautiful music, seein friends I’ve been missin’…turned out was more like going to a funeral. They have already lost a chunk of families over this latest antioch-sstyle debacle. Faces I knew and loved scattered to the winds, rather look at anyone else’s face than yours who would stay in a church with such uncharitable leaders…converts, cradles…it’s a cold world out there.

I have had friendships pure and golden
But the ties of kinship I have not known them
I know no mother no father
No sister no brother
I am an orphan girl

so back home to my own parish in the midwest, convert also…and the German-Swedish-Danish Lutherans, Methodists and other assorted midwestern types…..who are so clannish you couldn’t break in with a crowbar.

My mom spent her whole life in a German-Lutheran Church (and I grew up there) trying to even catch a sympathetic eye.
kinda sad to watch, just waitin for a crumb from the table and once in a while one or two did…barely enough to keep a soul from despair.

But she stuck around because even though her brothers and sisters were cliquish. bullies, and she didn’t marry into any of the “royal” families, she stuck it out; she could somehow see farther than the whole lot of them and she the One Who really buttered the bread.
Hope I inherited her tenacity.

But when He calls me I will be able
To meet my family at God’s table
I’ll meet my mother my father
My sister my brother
No more orphan girl

So keep prayin brother, keep your nose clean and out of places it don’t belong…so many of us who aren’t used to this top down thing are trying to do the same.
And I am thinking of my mother of blessed memory and hoping and prayin with all my heart I inherited her tenacity and her wisdom and humility (and capacity for humiliation, if needed) and remember-even though it would be nice to make nice with those who hand out the bread…it’s so much more important to remember Who butters that bread.

Blessed Savior make me willing
And walk beside me until I’m with them
Be my mother my father
My sister my brother
I am an orphan girl