From the Dean
Across the country young people are writing about what they experienced over the summer. Adults are comparing books they read. All Souls will offer a variation of this in the Adult Forum in August and early September.
We will have the opportunity to hear from college age students who traveled The Way of St. James to The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. This thousand year old pilgrimage trail is traveled by some 100,000 persons each year. As well, youth and staff who participated in Camp Henry and Camp Henry Outdoor School will offer reflections from the summer.
I believe these reports to be more than a hearing of something someone else did. When any of us sojourns, we all sojourn. Experiences by elements of the community become part of the collective experience of the whole.
On the last Sunday of August I presented thoughts from a book I read this summer, Money and Faith: the Search for Enough, edited by Michael Schut. Any book including Wendell Berry and Dave Barry as contributors is compelling in itself. Issues Schut plays with include: the meaning of money for us, growth, compassion, corporations, retirement, globalization, debt and Sabbath. It is not a book for those who are convinced. It too is a pilgrimage of sorts, raising questions that will compel, cajole and stir conversation for a long period of time.
I recently told a group I am distressed about an aspect of our life at the Cathedral. For years we have provided parish and Cathedral offerings of Bible study, on various types of prayer, for discernment of lay and ordained vocation, of pilgrimages and of engagement with a variety speakers, authors and books. We associate these things with spirituality. All of these are important, good and vital; their attendance suggests we are speaking to real hungers both at All Souls and throughout our diocese. At the same time, we—and I include myself in that we—have not explored with the same energy issues of economics. In this we are playing with a dangerous demarcation of spirituality: prayer is spiritual, money is something else. Whenever we see any part of our life separate from what church does, if we see any aspect of our life as less spiritual than another, we play with death. It is my hope we will find more ways to include economics and money in our regular pattern of life, not as a way to tell other people what to do, but as a way to experience a path to and with Jesus, a path of freedom.
Durgapur comes to WNC
On Sunday the 12th of September a delegation from our companion diocese will visit All Souls. They will be traveling throughout the diocese to bring news of their work in Durgapur. These mutual visits between Western North Carolina and Durgapur allow us to engage in the flesh those for whom we pray each week, those who also pray for us each week. Bishop Dutta will preach at the 9 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. services. Members of the delegation will be present with us in Adult Forum.
In a period of time where globalization can no longer be something to merely consider, we are fortunate to have tangible relationships that remind us globalization is not a concept; it is about human beings and human relationships. Please join us in welcoming our companions.