Interviewing Quincy bishop candidates

Father Joe sent out this update from the Diocese: 

“Please continue to keep the Nominating Committee for our next bishop in your prayers. This group of people received applications for the next bishop of Quincy. They are currently reviewing the paper work and will conduct initial interviews very soon. Once the field of candidates is narrowed down to the canonical requirement of at least three, but no more than five people, then a second round of interviews, will be conducted. Watch for more information on the second round of interviews as these will be forums for people from outside the Nominating Committee to submit questions to the candidates. We will also videotape these interviews and make copies available to all churches, so that the congregations can make informed choices for the election of the bishop. The time and place of the election will be announced very soon.”

I’m going to try to find out a little more about the process; I'll post anything pertinent here. 

For example, are people asked to apply? Does a notification go out saying there’s an opening? Is there some kind of ecclesiastical headhunter organization, as there is in business, to find candidates to fill key positions such as this? 

I’m also curious about what qualities the committee is looking for in a new bishop. I know there was a survey earlier seeking input from clergy and laity. It would be interesting to get a look at a summary of skills, talents and experience in the ideal candidate. 

Eighty years and counting

Mom turns eighty Saturday. 

A series of strokes have left her with limited use of her right arm and leg. She spends her days and nights in a La-Z-Boy recliner at Bickford Cottage. She has trouble speaking. But her mind is clear, she still has a great sense of humor, and she continues to be one of the happiest people I know. 

When I start feeling ground down by the world -- as I do this week -- I think about her. 

Snow falling on cedars

It’s a paradox that things can be simple and complex at the same time.

I woke up at 3:30 a.m. to discover it had snowed overnight. Looking out the window at a landscape bright despite the overcast a few nights past full moon, everything was stark black and white. The tree trunks and limbs, the wooden fence, the vertical parts of the iron table and chairs on the patio: black. Everything else was perfect white, sharp lines and edges softened beneath a blanket of new snow. 

I thought about what the snow might represent as a metaphor. Grace coming down from heaven to make everything white and clean and fresh? Mainly, it was just snow. Simple and uncomplicated as snow is -- unless you get down to the granular level of examining individual snowflakes, which are supposed to be infinite in their crystalline variety. 

I spent time yesterday catching up on news from the Anglican communion. 

I read that Bishop Mouneer Anis of Jerusalem has resigned from the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion. The bishop was quoted as saying his presence on the committee had “no value whatsoever” and his voice was “like a useless cry in the wilderness.” 

I’ve always liked Bishop Anis. He speaks his mind and uses plain language.

At the Stand Firm website, where there is always good discussion, Sarah Hey put up a post delving into difficulties with the Anglican Communion Covenant -- details which become increasingly byzantine and problematic the closer you study them. 

It is easy for a lay person to gloss over the difficulties of getting the primates and bishops to settle on a framework that preserves orthodoxy -- especially considering the fact that there are people in authority working hard to do just the opposite. 

Still, it seems to me Christianity is very simple. Love God. Love thy neighbor. Participate with Christ in the suffering of the world. Through Christ come to know God and receive the hope salvation. 

Personal experience has taught me that the simpler things are, the truer they are, although maybe that is because I am simple-minded. The Devil really is always in the details. The simpler things are, the fewer the places for the enemy to hide. 

Maybe sometime things simply are black and white. Even though, looked at from a different perspective, they are also complex.

For God alone my soul in silence waits;

truly, my hope is in him.

He alone is my rock and my salvation,

my stronghold, so that I shall not be broke. 

The Holy Spirit

Sometimes God seems near, sometimes very far away. 

This mystifies me. Since God is always there, how can it seem otherwise? 

Father McClaskey used to talk about the Holy Spirit drawing close to us sometimes but pulling away at others, depending upon what we need. He compared it to a loving parent raising a child: Sometimes the child needs all the help and support the father can provide, but other times the child needs to be made to stand on his or her own two feet. 

Mother Theresa suffered for fifty years, feeling “no presence of God whatsoever” in her life. St. Therese of Lisieux called these spiritual tests the “night of nothingness.” The people considering Mother Theresa for sanctification say the fact she did not feel the presence of God during much of her life did not change the fact that He was working through her in helping Calcutta’s poor, sick and dying. 

For the less saintly among us, maybe it is we who withdraw, not the Holy Spirit. Like stiff-necked Hebrews in the Old Testament, the moment God does something good for us, we decide we’re in charge -- not God -- and turn away. 

When we put ourselves first, things always go wrong.