A group from this diocese including Molly Walling, Shawna Gilmore and me will be traveling Thursday through Sunday to Philadelphia for a "Day or Repentance" service.  It is the fruit of a resolution passed at our last General Convention asking for recognition and repentance for the ways the church remained silent during years of American slave trade.  It will be accompanied by workshops and displays helping us to 'raise up' these ghosts of our past that we might be restored from the generational consequences of this practice and it consequences to our collective soul.

The past weeks of financial turmoil remind us that all of our actions are related and consequential for the whole family of human beings.  The willingness to take advantage, the sense that we are owed, the sense that my action won't affect others and if so, well they should be working as hard as me...  all of this contributes to the choking of life for all of us.  Wherever dignity is seen as disposable or purchase-able, or inconsequential, we are all diminished.  Beyond the finger pointing of the market's disease is a basic human reality that humans are prone to grab for more than is theirs and to dispute that we can even consider what is just ("What level of income makes one rich?"  I would love to have heard Rick Warren ask that of Jesus.  No doubt Rick and just about all of us would have wrestled with Jesus' answer).

I am not sure I know the answer, yet think the question might be missing the point.  Perhaps Jesus would have said, "Are there any hungry tonight?  Are there any without homes tonight?  Seek first that all are fed and all are housed, then your richness will be apparent."  Don't know if he would have said that, but figure he would have redirected the question somehow (and been blamed by the pundits for not answering!)

I don't have quick answers for slavery or if I would have owned slaves were I born in another time.  I don't have quick answer's for who is rich and probably shouldn't (for my definitions usually comes out in my favor).  What I think I should be considering is how each of my daily decisions and actions and choices contribute to the fullness of life for all on this planet, how my use of food, energy and money contributes to making others 'joy complete', how my life is dependent upon all others and they upon me.  If I work to dwell on that, perhaps my trading, my working, my imagining will be infused by the Word who promises to dwell where it is invited.

"...grant that we may never forget that our common life depends upon each others toil..."  BCP p 134

"Hallowed be Thy name in Commerce.  God be at my desk and in my trading."  Sign in Coventry Cathedral

Peace,

Todd