Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Written on the day the House of Bishops published their Resolution in New Orleans


IfI take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely,
I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life –
and only then will I be free to become myself.

Only a god can save us.


- Martin Heidegger, German philosopher,
born on this day, 1889


Well, it has taken fourty years. Fourty years of ministry, as a monastic and as a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada and then in the Episcopal Church. Fourty years through which I have naively believed and trusted that the Episcopal Church would do the right thing. Today it has chosen not to. It has forcefully declared all of our Gay and Lesbian layfolk and clergy to be barely tolerated fourth-class “citizens”. It has told them that bigots and racists and bishops who advocate murder in Nigeria and biblical fundamentalists are worth more than they are, more worth having as fellow church colleagues than they are.

It is a very sad day. But amazingly, it is a very liberating day. Heidegger is bang on right. Today the Episcopal Church has given me a great gift. It has permitted me to take death into my life in a way that has never happened before, certainly not in a way that my now several near brushes with physical death have done. How both odd and yet deeply appropriate that it is the Church that has allowed my soul to experience death, to “acknowledge it,and face it squarely”.

Driving home, I felt odd. Then I realized that suddenly all the anger of decades has dissolved. My soul feels freed “from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life”. And I feel deeply that I am now “free to become myself”. Alas also to recognize how I have often been my own slavemaster.

No, the Church cannot save us. “Only a god can save us” - and now I see that it is not the god worshipped by the Episcopal Church hierarchy or a large part of the Anglican Communion that can save us either.

How freeing! Take heart, all you Gay and Lesbian folk, lay and ordained, of the Episcopal Church. The days ahead offer fine fine possibilities. And walking with us, and with all faithful folk who embrace justice and truth, is the gracious and loving God Who made us all in Her Divine Image.

“We are seen as dead, and yet we live”. Now I know what Paul meant. Really know.

Thank you, bishops of the Episcopal Church. Your betrayal has made Christ’s message of liberation leap to life. For all our Gay and Lesbian folk, and all who join them, a new day is coming.

Brian+