I attended the book signing event last night for Presiding Bishop Katherine’s new book A Wind and a Prayer at the Episcopal Church Center’s new “Catalyst Cafe & Book Store.” I ran into an departmental official of the Episcopal Church who I know slightly. We talked.
This official made the comment that whenever +Katherine enters a room, her presence is noticed. A quite and confident presence. You know these kinds of people. I think she does have that kind of presence. I got my book signed.
The official made a statement about the upcoming Primates meeting in Tanzania next week. There is great controversy in anticipation of the meeting because several Primates have made it clear that if +Katherine shows up, they will not sit with her or meet with her. The official said that in light of this ability of +Katherine to enter a room and woe people as her presence is felt, that when she goes to Tanzania next week she will walk into the meeting, sit down, and everything will change. Suddenly, all the blustering of these Primates will be overwhelmed by her aura, her quiet and confident presence. He doesn’t understand them!
This is the problem with many on the liberal side of the on going debates. They just really don’t get it. They haven’t up to this point, and rather than stepping back for a moment and reassessing, listening, and seeing how things are actually unfolding, they continue on in their mistaken assumptions. It reminds me of the Bush administration with respect to the Iraqi war and their understanding of the “enemy.” They just don’t get it, but think the really do.
Those Primates who are on the conservative side of the pressing issues will not be easily wooed by this women just because she has an aura about her. I hope they can be, at least so far as to sit down and get to know her, but I am not expecting it.
Daily Archives: February 8, 2007
Another Athanasius quote
Anthanasius, in On the Incarnation:
“But since the will of man could turn either way, God secured this grace that He had given by making it conditional from the first upon two things – namely a law and a place. He sat them in His own paradise, and laid upon them a single prohibition. If they guarded the grace and retained the loveliness of their origional innocence, then the life of paradise should be theirs without sorrow, pain or care, and after it the assurance of immortality in heaven. But if they went astray and became vile, throwing away their birthright of beauty, then they would come under the natural law of death and live no longer in paradise, but dying outside of it, continue in death and corruption. This is what holy scripture tells us, proclaiming the command of God, ‘Of every tree in the Garden thou shalt surely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall not eat, but in that day that ye do eat, thou shalt surely die.’ [Gen. 2:16f] ‘Ye shall surely die…’ – not just die only, but remain in a state of death and corruption.”
Was the plan all along that man and woman would eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and learn what it means to face the consequences of one’s actions – thus being truly able to choose competently between one thing and another? Was this all a part of learning what it meant to be made in the very image of God, who can create freely and choose freely? Or, did we truly thwart God’s will for us as His creation, defying His good will and His command?