Dear Jack,

Well on Friday, Mike and I headed to Manhattan and registered with the City as domestic partners. To celebrate we met several friends at Mundo in Astoria on Saturday for dinner. Keri, Jason O., Paul, Karen, Jason N., Daniel, Sebastian, Lucia, Abigail, and Jon all joined us. It was great. Unfortunately Mundo, or well, the owner, was rude to Karen and Jason N.. I was embarrassed, and will probably not be going back anytime soon. It was unlike the owner, but I was really upset.

After dinner, Jason N., Daniel, Sebastian, and Brendan joined us at Omonia for desert. That was much more pleasant.

Today Michael and I visited Saint Luke in the Fields on Hudson St. It was a most pleasant visit with some wonderful people. We will be back next week for certain. I am hopeful that Michael and I will eventually find the parish that we need to be at. This may be it, but it may be not.

As I write about the parish we visit, my mind is drawn to the service that was held earlier today in Lambeth. The Rt. Rev. Duleep de Chickera, Bishop of Colombo in Sri Lanka was the preacher and in another post I will share his sermon. It is worth a read.

My mind is drawn to when I was in Oxford in the summer of 2003, and how as I studied with Dr. Hobbie, the Episcopal Church met for General Convention and decided to consent to the nomination of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. I’ve recently been reviewing journal entries from that time and adding them to this blog. How similar is my anxiety as I read about what is going on there. It is even more pungent to me, having met Bishop Robinson on many occasions, as well as becoming closely acquainted with Davis MacIyalla of Changing Attitudes Nigeria. I know not much will happen, and I know their exclusion is bearing witness to work that needs to be done. I think also of my 2004 summer at Kanuga when Archbishop Eames and the Lambeth Commission drafted parts of the Windsor Report. I had such an opportunity to be there and overhear their conversations. Part of me wonders if I could or should have spoken to them.

How far my life has come from 2003 and 2004, and yet how very slowly has the Church come in the same time. I read my posts and entries from 2003 and 2004 and see how immature I was in many ways, and I hope I have grown up. In someways, I see the opposite in the Communion, as some bishops refuse to break bread in the Sacrament of Unity ordained by Christ as a way of memorializing him. It reminds me of the children who are upset and take their toys home. Bishop de Chickera was prophetic in his restatement of the parable from Matthew today. “There can and there must be no uprooting, simply because if we attempt this game of uprooting the unrighteous then, my dear sisters and brothers, none of us will remain.”