Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Last Day Reflections

Today we closed out our time by hearing from our Primate observers, those primates who had joined us for our time at Kanuga.

We also had a very good business meeting. We then finished with a town hall meeting and Eucharist.

It was a good meeting. While called a retreat there was not a lot of "retreat" to it. Your bishops work very hard from 8 in the morning till 9 at night. The day as you can read about below is filled with meetings and gatherings undertaking the work of the church in its various incarnations.

The Spirit of the House was good. It is my perception that we are committed to one another beyond our divisions. The spirit of collegiality and common work is very high. I feel as the Bishop of Texas that I am finding my way within the wider community of the House. I am finding my voice and participating in areas of our common life that are of interest to me.

Bishop High was missed. As he is drawing near to his time as our Bishop Suffragan he thought it best to tend to matters at home. It is clear that he and Pat are as beloved within the wider community of Bishops as he is in our own Diocese. I assured his many friends that he would be with us again in time.

I was proud to stand next to Bishop Harrison who is well regarded and sought after within the wider House for her insight, truthfulness, and leadership. She is not only a very important member of our diocesan life, she plays a leadership role within the wider church that should make all of us in the Diocese of Texas very proud. I continue to be grateful for her partnership and friendship. I assure the wider church is grateful for her ministry!

She is on her way home to host an IONA meeting between 7 other diocese and the Seminary as we share the resources of our school throughout the wider church. I leave tomorrow morning to join our administrators in San Antonio for the BEST conference. I will be serving on a panel of other bishops. Stephanie, Alice, and Martha are leaders within this community of Bishops' administrators and I am going to support them in their wider community. Then I will be at a gala for St. Mark's Episcopal School Houston Friday night, and at Palmer on Sunday. Sunday night we have a fundraising dinner for Camp Allen - then after long last I can have a day with my family.

Texas...I am proud of our diocese, grateful to be your bishop diocesan. We are doing good work in partnership with many around the Episcopal Church in the 17 different countries and the wider communion. I am looking forward to coming home and rejoining the local effort! This has been a good meeting of the House of Bishops.


Rt. Rev. C. Andrew Doyle, D.D.
IX Bishop of Texas
Sent from portable while out of office.

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Quotes

  • "Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process." Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • "Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer." Oliver Wendell Holmes
  • "Perfection, in a Christian sense, means becoming mature enough to give ourselves to others." Kathleen Norris
  • "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can." John Wesley
  • "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." G. K. Chesterton
  • "One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans." C. S. Lewis
  • "When we say, 'I love Jesus, but I hate the Church,' we end up losing not only the Church but Jesus too. The challenge is to forgive the Church. This challenge is especially great because the church seldom asks us for forgiveness." Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey
  • "Christians are hard to tolerate; I don't know how Jesus does it." Bono
  • "It's too easy to get caught in our little church subcultures, and the result is that the only younger people we might know are Christians who are already inside the church." Dan Kimball