+Gene Robinson & Lambeth

I may have already blogged on this, but if so, you can ignore.  My last name beginning with a B, I was the first to be presented.  During the rehearsal, they indicated for me to stand on the Chi-Rho which is embedded in the floor just before the first row of pews.  Standing there while the others talked about whether or not that was the best place, etc., I had this feeling of standing in the loneliest place in the universe.  I thought to myself this must be a minute touch of what Christ felt on the cross.

  During the actual service, though, when I stepped up to the Chi-Rho, I felt the exact opposite, that everything and everyone in the universe was in that exact same spot, touch me, bumping up against me, and loving me.  Perhaps Christ felt that, too, on the cross.

   Bishop +Gene Robinson is in Lambeth right now, and I suspect that he, and several other bishops who support him and are standing with him, are feeling both of these: the intense loneliness and intense love of all there is upon the cross.

   +Gene´s blog (click here) gave an indication of that, the poignancy of his feelings and the sense of relationship to those who are in the borders and on the margins of society. are expressed in his writing.

   I pray for those bishops now assembled that by the same grace of the Holy Spirit which has drawn them together, they shall be faithful to follow the Spirit´s guidance in their deliberations, and keep before them the apostolicity of the abundance of God´s loving-steadfastness, the distribution of which is their charge. I pray especially for +Gene, bishop in Christ's Church, and those who stand with him; and I pray for my bishops: +Katherine, +Marc and +Steven (California), and +Bob (Hawai'i).