Gracious Restraint?

Tomorrow night I am attending a meeting in Sydney at which the speaker will be the Primate of Australia and Archbishop of Brisbane, Phillip Aspinall.
He had lunch with Bishop Gene Robinson in Anaheim and I think also met with him in Brisbane but I am nervous about the title of his address.
Gracious Restraint: Hastening Slowly in the Anglican Communion

It is worth noting that the meeting is not in the Sydney Cathedral but in the most anglo-catholic of parishes in the diocese, Christ Church St Laurence.
I sense Archbishop Aspinall is sympathetic but am afraid any idea of gracious restraint is just seen as weakness by those who run the Sydney Diocese.

If TEC and the province of New Zealand had maintained a policy of gracious restraint I doubt there would be women priests let alone Bishops anywhere in the Anglican Communion. The stranglehold of the Diocese of Sydney has kept Australia way back in accepting the rights of women (Priests 1992, Bishops 2008 and still not as Diocesans) while New Zealand had women priests in 1977 and a woman as Diocesan Bishop in 1990). If the Australian province continues to kowtow in gracious restraint to the Sydney Diocese in acceptance of LGBT people, there will be no change in my lifetime.

I am usually far too nervous to speak up in such public meetings but would like to read out the following comment in 'The Changing Attitude Blog"

We are already present in the church. However, we are clearly not fully present. Our presence is fully welcomed and accepted in a few Provinces, tolerated in others and invisible in the majority of Provinces.

Where it is now legally possible, we are contracting Civil Partnerships and Marriages. Elsewhere we are creating relationships equivalent to marriage - loving, lifelong, faithful and monogamous.

We are present at every level of church ministry, lay and ordained, readers, deacons, priests, bishops and archbishops, celibate, single and partnered.
We are present across the whole Anglican Communion, LGBT people of faith, the majority of us invisible to and unrecognised by the church.

The attention of the Communion is absorbed by consideration of the Anglican Covenant, questions about church order, authority and doctrine and an obsession with homosexuality.

Our very presence demands an answer to the question we pose, a question that will never go away because we LGBT people will never go away. LGBT people will continue to be born and drawn into a life of faith by the Holy Spirit in OUR as yet unwelcoming Anglican Communion.

How IS the Anglican Communion going to make room for us? I know how the church is pragmatically making room for us in England and Wales, the USA and Canada, in South Africa and New Zealand. I know how the church is trying to deny room in Nigeria and Uganda, the Sudan and Kenya, the Southern Cone and South East Asia.

The conservative tactic has been to focus on the USA and Canada as the Provinces presenting the Communion with a problem. These Provinces present the Communion with a challenge, one which will engage every Province. LGBT people are in the midst of the church, woven invisibly into church life. We are constructing healthy, creative and holy lives in response to the call of God, inspired by political change in the secular world.

We are a minority in the church. We are caught in a trap. We cannot easily show the church how profoundly committed and faithful we are to God because the prejudice and hostility directed against us intimidates us into silence and invisibility.

How is the Anglican Communion graciously going to open herself and make room for us?

Great comments

Two items today I have found most moving.

From KJ on Madpriest, please read the whole comment if you have not done so already.

You see, Tim, I once followed the "accurate" advice you prescribe here. This is what I was told was right and the will of God for me. There was just one problem, this advice nearly led to the end of my existence on earth as it led to despair. I wanted it to be true -- I wanted to be like every other evangelical boy, I assumed, a heterosexual. I wanted to marry a lovely girl and "settle down." I wanted to not be me. I clung so tightly to what I wanted to be true of me, and what others said needed to be true to me, that what God would have me to be was nearly lost. Yet, to those on the "outside," I was a fine example of a good evangelical boy, busy with the work of the "gospel," while dying in need of relationship on the inside.

And there's the spiritual rub, of course. How does the Spirit use one when that one is consumed with attempting to be what he or she is not? How is it good news to tell others to pretend to be someone else? To others like me, I had nothing to offer. This is not good, and it certainly is not news.

And from Rev Susan Russell at An Inch at a Time reporting from TEC convention.

The woman who stopped me in the worship hall to thank Integrity for our work and then to share that she had attended the Integrity Eucharist with her 14 year old son -- and that afterwards in their hotel room he had come out to her.

"I've known he was gay since he was about 4," she said, her eyes welling up. "And have been waiting for him to figure it out. The fact that he came to himself in the context of a celebration of the Eucharist -- that he's never going to have to wonder if his church or his family will love and accept him as he is -- I just can't thank you enough."

"He's a really great kid," she said, wiping her eyes. "And he's going to be FABULOUS gay man! "

I pray for the day when it will not be necessary for so many young GLBT Christians to wrestle with a perceived conflict between their faith and their sexuality but instead discover it as part of their unique God created being.

Martyrs, Courageous Priest and Time problems

Please visit Counterlight and read 'No More Martyrs' So true, so moving.

Also visit and read about a very courageous priest Father Geoff Farrow and pray for him. The comments he is receiving moved me to tears. His sermon last week had so much truth in it, it should be read in all churches. I become so angry when I think of the GLBT people who are turned away from the houses of the Lord.

The poor man must have put up his last post re the letter from the bishop late at night on the west coast of the USA so my friends on the East Coast and in Europe were asleep (I hope). Here it was merely late afternoon so I was able to alert some of the blogs to the latest news. Thanks for the hat tip from Grandmere and Madpriest.

Usually I am disadvantaged by the World Clock. You all post while I am asleep and then there is so much to read in the morning when I really should get out into the garden before the heat of the day or I have to leave for church (this morning) or hiking (tomorrow). Then the intertubes are so quiet when I have time to read late in my afternoon. I really must learn to ignore the blogs until after I have done my garden and house chores.
I have just begun a course at church on 'Preparing for Holy Week and Easter'. It is being led by both a Catholic and an Anglican priest. Father Gerard Moore (Catholic) led us through the history last week. Pointing out first that there was division about the 3rd or 4th century as to the time of the main Easter celebration (Thursday gradually gave way to Sunday). He wrily commented there was a lot of nastiness and argy bargy over this, so nothing is new in the Church. However he also pointed out that those of us in the Southern Hemisphere do not get the full point of Easter which celebrates the 'Coming of the Light'. For us it is increasing darkness especially when Easter falls well into April. Perhaps we should celebrate Easter at a different time to those in the North( I doubt it).
Anyway time can be a problem for those of us living both south of the equator and half way round the world.

Returning to Father Farrow. I have just an inkling of what he is going through. Back in the 1980's I came out as a teacher in a Senior Catholic College. I also regularly attended Mass at 'Acceptance' a group for gay catholics. We had visiting priests (obviously) and even a bishop once (he has now retired). That was before the present Cardinal Pell was sent to discipline the Sydney diocese. He is renowned as a homophobe.
Back in those days I found much more acceptance and help than in my own Anglican churches. There were many inclusive religious and laiety. Generally it was believed one's job was safe if one kept a low profile but I published anonymously an article about coming out as a teacher in a catholic school. I was told it caused consternation amongst some of the authorities who knew who had written it. Sadly AIDS meant I found less and less support from the students and so I eventually moved on. After a break I returned to a catholic school but this time a junior high in a different diocese and I did not feel it was appropriate to come out publicly although many would have known of my orientation.
I do pray Father Farrow finds support and a continuing role at this time.