As our week-long House of Bishops meeting came to an end Monday afternoon, Ian Douglas, former bishop of Connecticut, now assisting in Massachusetts, stepped to the mic. Several of us pending retirees probably wouldn’t be back. He asked us to stand and receive a round of applause.
Ian’s kind gesture lent the savor of sacramental closure to a season of my life that began in September 2017, when Kathy and I attended our first HOB meeting in Alaska. While I’ve loved these semiannual gatherings, owing to family of origin issues, among my colleagues, I never quite got over feeling like the new kid on the first day of seventh grade.
And yet I depart as an elder. A couple of days ago, a group of us showed Greg Kimura, bishop-elect of the Diocese of San Joaquin, how to find his apostolic number on Wikipedia. Yes, folks, bishops are counted by the date of their ordination and consecration in The Episcopal Church’s succession. Samuel Seabury of Connecticut, consecrated in Scotland in 1784, is number one. I’m 1101. By the grace of God, on April 18 Greg will become 1175, and on July 11, Antonio José Gallardo Lucena, the eighth bishop of Los Angeles, will make it 1180 (another historic eight for his collection).
That will mean that by mid-summer, 79 of about 120 active bishops will have been ordained since I was in July 2016. Each meeting I’m astonished by the sheer heft of my colleagues’ accumulated wisdom. News accounts better communicate the extent our official work over the last week, especially with respect to theological education and our pastoral Word to the Church.
Photo: With Nicholas, Miguelina, and Doug
An unexpected meeting over coffee this morning at IAH echoed the practical conversations that occurred all week long around the dining room tables at Camp Allen. Making sure we’d get through security on time opened space for this last session of my ten-year college for bishops. Miguelina Espinal Howell (1176) will be consecrated in Western Massachusetts in April, taking the crozier from Doug Fisher (1073). She was our gracious, eloquent HOB chaplain while serving as dean of the cathedral in Hartford, Connecticut. He mentored me when we worked together on corporate social justice issues. Nicholas Knisely (1071), bishop of Rhode Island for 14 years, is a specialist in growing churches.
What did we four talk about? The names we prefer vs. the ones people sometimes call us. How to juggle a mitre, crozier, and service booklet in a binder, when to doff the mitre, and whether anyone cares. The pros and nopes of copes. Who can attend whose consecration. Retirement hopes and anxieties. Imagine these and two hundred other topics over the course of a week. Shop talk, as with all people who share a vocation. We teach and learn as we share and listen. Though nearly done, I received some valuable suggestions and reassurances just this morning. As the psalm says, “Behold, how pleasant it is for siblings to dwell together in unity.” Fruit of the Resurrection, food for our journeys through perilous times with the people of God. Au revoir to a very, very fine house, a house like no other.