Following the #HOB13 happenings in Nashville ...

If you are an Anglican/Episcopal Wonk, check out the posts here and here and here on the current happenings down there in Nashville.

In the meantime, here's a tune from Mumford & Sons.

A Prayer for Washington, D.C.

It is not the easiest time to be living around Washington, D.C. Heard this today and it just helped me focus my heart and prayers for this amazing city:

A very good time to pray ...

Praying for the situation at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. as a shooting is underway.

The Episcopal Church loses battle in the Diocese of Quincy

From here:

The Rt. Rev. Keith Ackerman.

An Illinois circuit court has rejected the national Episcopal Church’s claim that it is a “hierarchical church” under law, handing down a ruling that supports the Diocese of Quincy’s secession from the national church.

Details of the court's ruling have yet to be analyzed by Anglican Ink, but the Illinois ruling appears to have rejected the legal arguments brought by the national Episcopal Church in its litigation with departing dioceses and congregations -- upholding the neutral principles of law doctrine over deference to the denominational polity of the church.

The suit came On 7 Nov 2008 delegates to the diocesan synod meeting at St John’s Church in Quincy, Illinois, approved the second and final reading of a constitutional amendment withdrawing from the Episcopal Church. The vote was 41-14 in the clergy order and 54-12 by the laity. A second resolution affiliating the diocese with the Southern Cone pending the creation of a Third Province in North America was approved 46-4 in the clergy order and 55-8 in the lay order.

Attorneys for the national church in January 2009 wrote to the bank that manages the diocese’s endowment funds, stating that the breakaway diocese no longer had a claim on the funds and that its officers should not be permitted to disperse the funds. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori wrote the members of the Standing Committee in February informing them that she no longer “recognized” them as officers of the diocese.

The diocese responded by filing suit in March against the national church, seeking a declaratory judgment that it had the legal right to the name and assets of the diocese. The national church filed a counter claim against the officers of the diocese – which was without a bishop following the retirement of the Rt. Rev. Keith Ackerman – and sought a summary judgment against the diocese and its leaders. It argued that a rump group within the diocese that remained loyal to the national church was the true diocese, and the court should give precedence to the denomination’s leadership in resolving the dispute.

A key issue before the trial court was whether the Episcopal Church was a "hierarchical church”, as described in the 1872 U.S. Supreme Court decision Watson v. Jones.  The Supreme Court held in that case “the religious congregation or ecclesiastical body holding the property is but a subordinate member of some general church organization in which there are superior ecclesiastical tribunals with a general and ultimate power of control more or less complete, in some supreme judicatory over the whole membership of that general organization.”

However, the relationship of a parish to a diocese was not comparable to that of a diocese to the national church, the attorneys for Quincy argued. They further argued the national church’s 1982 constitutional amendment that dioceses acceded to the national church’s constitution and canons did not mean that dioceses were subordinate to the general convention.

Attorneys for the diocese asked Judge Ortbal to examine the facts and issues in dispute through Illinois law and judge the matter under the doctrine of neutral principles of law – the standard set in 1984 for church property disputes by the Illinois courts, not ecclesiastical deference.

Read it all here.

Today at the Cafe: More love to Thee

It is a good news.

Was posting this on another blog and thought it is such good news, let's publish it here too.

All that glitters is not gold ... from Gatsby to This Town.

A fascinating read, a fascinating interview - get your book here, watch the interview here and below. Read an excerpt here. And all of it is true.



Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby seems to be less about NY's Roaring Twenties and more about DC's Roaring Teens, right down to that "extraordinary sense of hope."

Watch that film here.  Preview below. It is also true.



Or as Shakespeare put it:

All that glisters is not gold;
Often have you heard that told:
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold:
Gilded tombs do worms enfold.
Had you been as wise as bold,
Young in limbs, in judgement old
Your answer had not been inscroll'd
Fare you well, your suit is cold.

The Merchant of Venice

Tonight at the Cafe: Alabaster Jar

While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? 5It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.

“Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 

The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

Mark 14-3-9