Author: wonderfulexchange

Kimberly Bohan is a priest in the Diocese of Lincoln, less surprised by angels than by being so far south.

present primates

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I finally found a chance to watch +Katherin Jefferts Schori’s webcast Conversation with the Church that was broadcast from Holy Trinity, Wall Street on Wednesday. It was impressive, both for its content and for the use of technology. +KJS gave (scripted) reflections on the Primates meeting, then took questions from a live audience, by phone and by e-mail.

At one point, a woman rang up to ask +KJS whether she had really said something she was reported to have said and if so to defend it. The caller then said, ‘I’m a priest. If you have said it, I don’t how to make sense of it. I feel undermined.’

I very much doubt the woman felt satisfied by +KJS’s answer, but what struck me was the importance of the transaction. This was probably the first and last time that the priest had been able to ask the Presiding Bishop a question and get an immediate response. This is as near as they would come to meeting and talking. And this is true for the vast majority of priests in The Episcopal Church.

Contrast that with my morning on Friday. I got the 7am ferry and a couple of trains so that I could be in Edinburgh for a committee meeting by 10am. The primus walked in a few minutes later, and we stood talking about what happened in Tanzania as we drank our coffee. No one else joined in — I suspect because most of the other people in the room had seen the primus within the past two weeks, and had already spoken with him about it.

Then, we went into the meeting to discuss routine sorts of things and the primus ‘blended in’ like anyone else. Over lunch we talked about Synods and leaking roofs, then he went to tend to other matters: his own diocese, or perhaps one of the other two he is overseeing during their vacancies.

This is what I love about this church. If we have a question for the primus we can ask it. Over coffee. In person. As if it were the most natural thing in the world.

And he will usually answer — as a human being. As one priest to another. As primus. Take your pick.

Being a small church has its benefits. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for that woman in the States, lifting the phone to ring into the webcast, knowing that it was her only chance to ‘speak’ with her primate.

a new generation

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While world stock markets slid into free-fall, I did my bit for the economy by buying a long awaited lap-top. And made the braver move of buying a Mac to run alongside my desktop PC.

And oh, how the Mac’s have changed.

I was a first generation Mac user — though in fact, I never liked them as much as I should have, given that the alternative was word-processing on a Unix based Vax.

But I distinctly remember the Apple representatives coming to my school in 1984 to convince our parents to buy the wonderful new machines. I don’t remember seeing the machines, mind — that didn’t come till a year or two later at high school. But I do remember being given a soft-film window decal of the rainbow striped apple, and thinking it was wonderful (be fair, now: I was 11). Already, Apple knew that the visual was all.

But that wasn’t their marketing game, then. No. This was an educational tool. Parents were urged to buy it for their child’s future. Intellectual growth was at stake.

Which was not the approach the salesman took today. He was both helpful and knowledgeable. Reassuringly geeky, in a post-modern sort of way.  He talked me through the various wireless options and how to try to trick horrid Orange (my internet provider) into shifting my contract to wireless without having to pay penalty fees. He showed me clever tricks and games. He didn’t push me to buy things I didn’t want. It all went beautifully until I asked about word processing.

We had already established that I could save files as .doc so that my PC could read them. He knew the speil about how well Mac runs Microsoft Office, and could rattle off the ways in which Mac runs circles round Vista. But he floundered when I asked about Apple’s own package.

‘I’ll just go on line and look that up,’ he said, frantically typing. And within seconds there were all the specs I needed for AppleWorks.

‘And how much is that?’ I asked, as I read the screen over his shoulder.

‘$79 plus shipping,’ he said. Now remember, dear reader: this was in Glasgow. In Glasgow, that’s the price of a decent cup of coffee.

We soon got it straight and decided that I would do best to order Apple Works from my desktop PC at home (since nasty Orange won’t play with the Mac till I change contracts).

But I was fascinated. Here was a clever man, who spends most of his life with computers, yet who knew nothing about word processing. Or indeed about any of the other ‘academic’ tools (apart from the built in camera for video conferencing). It seems computers are no longer educational tools at all — but rather extraordinary home entertainment centers.

So on the way home, I stopped to buy three DVDs — just in case my poor little lap-top went into graphics withdrawal with all those documents I’ll be typing.

Now, shall I save The Lion in Winter or A Chorus Line for Synod next week? Hmm…

they are we

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Now that you’ve all had a chance to read primary sources, a little something from the BBC interview with +Mark Sist from the diocese of New York:

BBC Do you feel as if you are being asked to choose between the communion on the one hand and on the other the gay and lesbian members of your church?

+MS I certainly think that some people would like us to make that choice. I would certainly hope that the majority of the communion is not asking us to make that choice.

BBC: But if they do ask you to make that choice on what side will you step?

+MS I would have to say, as I have said before, that in terms of the Gay and Lesbian Community, they are we. They are not guests in our church about which we can make a decision about whether they will be a part of us or not. They are who we are. So if it should come to some sort of bright line, I certainly would not abandon members of my own diocese, my own community for the benefit of people who do not value their presence.