Sunday, August 3, 2008

Lambeth Last Day: the ups, the downs, and heading home

After more than 7,000 video views over the past 19 days, Bishop Stephen and Bishop Chilton offer their reflections on the 2008 Lambeth Conference. Keep both of them and Gretchen and Mike in your prayers as they return home tomorrow.



From Bishop Chilton
It's our last night at Canterbury, and I sense that we are all ready to go home. Bishop Steve and I will prepare some further reflections on the entire Lambeth experience to share with our diocesan community, AFTER we have had some rest.

Three items of note today

1. Members of my "indaba group" said farewell today. The group of about 40 bishops meets every day after our smaller (8 bishops) Bible Study groups. Ours has been a wonderful indaba group, honest about our differences, mutually supportive all they way.

2. The Melanesian Brothers (featured at the end of the video above) played music before our concluding plenary at 4 p.m. today (Sunday). The Melanesian Brothers are a monastic community, rooted in the West Pacific/Indian Ocean area, whose special vocation is peace-making. To symbolize their commitment, they go to places of violent conflict and make camp, pitching their tents between enemies. A number of them were slaughtered on such a mission, and we remembered them tonight at the closing Eucharist as their names were added to the "Saints and Martyrs of our Day" roll at Canterbury Cathedral.

3. The video below document the huge amount of our time queuing up for everything from buses to meals to entry into protected venues. The aggregate hours spent q'ing surely amount to more than a program day's length! We DO get to do some visiting whilst q'ing, and tonight I found the Lanes "in q" for the final service at the cathedral. They are with their neighbor (in Darwin Courts housing here), Bishop Linda Nicholls of Toronto.

I can hardly wait to set my feet on Maine soil. Thank you all, so much, for praying for us, for your email greetings and for being the holy people you are. God is so good to us.

Always in Christ,
+CHILTON



Links of interest as the Lambeth Conference Concludes

The final text of a "reflections document," developed by 16 "listeners" selected from the Indaba groups at the 2008 Lambeth Conference is available here.

The Archbishop of Canterbury's concluding presidential address is available here.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori's statement on Lambeth is available here.

1 comment:

Bishop Alan Wilson said...

Congratulations to you people from a fellow Lambeth blogger! I was impressed by your team effort and your faithfulness in rolling those videos out! Some were more filmically Andy Warhol underground than others, but it was a great voice of authenticity.