All are Welcome in this Place

They can "do" church at the Canterbury Cathedral. The processions, the music, the precision and vestments - just glorious. The eight vergers got the entire procession of over 700 persons into place by precisely eleven o'clock. The mass setting was the "Missa Luba" and those boys and men of the Cathedral Choir could really sing that traditional Congolese music. The Gospel procession was led by brothers and sisters from Melanesia carrying the Gospel book in a scale model of a dug out canoe. The women were carrying the canoe while the men danced about. Isn't that the way it always is - the women doing the heavy lifting? I thought the writers of the service booklet were trying to be super cool calling them brothers and sisters until I realized they were from religious orders. The monks and nuns were dressed in traditional grass skirts and body paint but they appeared for Communion in their habits.

The Bishop of Colombo (Sri Lanka) preached a challenging sermon calling us all into a deeper appreciation of the full spectrum of the diversity that is the Anglican Communion. I must admit that somewhere in the sermon the administration side of me kicked in and I tried to calculate the cost of maintaining that great Cathedral and envying the way in which an elevator had been installed and their decent and abundant toilet facilities. My reverie was disturbed when I heard a familiar voice and looked up on my video screen to see Bishop E. Don Taylor (Assistant of New York) leading the Intercessions.

The post communion anthem was "All are Welcome in this Place." "...Here the outcast and the stranger, bear the image of God's face; let us bring an end to fear and danger, All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place." It was a thoughtful and haunting anthem. How I wish we could sing it so.

As I was leaving the service I ran into the Bishop of New Westminster (Canada) Michael Ingham. We mused together if all are so welcomed in this place why was our brother from New Hampshire missing. Later on I thought how could all this be? We have a TEC bishop who is seeking to move his entire diocese to the nether world and he was parading around after the great unifying service giving press interviews but then again - ALL are welcome in this place.