wfn.org | Somber bishops gather to deal with globalization

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2001-268

Somber bishops gather to deal with globalization

by James Solheim
jsolheim@episcopalchurch.org

     (ENS) It was a somber group of bishops that gathered Thursday night, 
September 20, in Burlington, Vermont, for their annual fall meeting. On the 
wall of the ballroom in the Radisson Hotel was a makeshift crucifix 
fashioned by Episcopalians from Rhode Island, made of scraps from the 
wreckage of the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan. A Spanish phrase was 
attached--"Build a new world."

     The world is high on the agenda at the meeting as it deals with the 
broad theme of globalization, its impacts and implications. In welcoming the 
135 bishops, many accompanied by their spouses, Presiding Bishop Frank T. 
Griswold said that he couldn't think of a topic "more pertinent." In the 
wake of the terrorist attack last week on the World Trade Center in New York 
and the Pentagon--two icons of the power of the United States in today's 
world--it is time "to look at how our national interests are perceived in 
the rest of the world," he said. "Even some of our friends are questioning 
our commitment to the common good."

     The underlying issue is one of reconciliation, Griswold argued. "What 
does it mean to be reconcilers as a church and as a province of the Anglican 
Communion?"

A common wound

     Griswold thanked the bishops for making the difficult decision to 
attend the meeting. "It is terribly important that we gather as a 
community," he said. Acknowledging that the meeting was taking place in 
"unusual and troubling circumstances," he said that "we have all personally 
and collectively suffered a trauma. All of us have been wounded" and it is 
best to deal with the effects "in community." Following the attack, he wrote 
a letter to the bishops urging them to attend the meeting.

     Part of the trauma, he added, is the loss of "our sense of immunity" 
and being forced to "face our vulnerability and fragility." He said that "it 
is a thin place in which we find ourselves" but he noted that many people 
are expressing "a need to be in sacred space. They are open in deeper ways 
to the mysteries of God."

     Bishops play a special role, he said, in supporting their clergy and 
people in this traumatic situation. But this meeting is also a time for the 
bishops to lay down some of the emotions of the last week and share their 
pain. "If you don't name your emotions you are the victim of those 
emotions," he warned, asking the bishops to "be available to one another." 
He hoped that the meeting and their mutual support would help them return to 
their dioceses "more fresh, grounded and renewed."

 From the frontline

     Griswold called on the bishops most directly affected by the terrorist 
attacks--Bishop Mark Sisk of New York and Bishop Jane Holmes Dixon of 
Washington, DC.

     Sisk described the "eerie experience" in the wake of events. He went to 
St. Luke's Hospital near the cathedral, which wanted help from the diocese 
in setting up a blood donor station and a temporary morgue, and later to 
Roosevelt Hospital nearer the World Trade Center. He had expected to see an 
influx of survivors and realized it was a bad sign when none arrived at the 
hospitals.

     When he visited Ground Zero the next day he was stunned that it was so 
quiet. He walked the area near Trinity Church and St. Paul's Chapel and was 
relieved that they seemed to survive intact. As he visit the rubble of what 
was the World Trade Center, "we realized we were standing at the grave of 
thousands of people," he said.

     Dixon said that the experience in Washington was quite different. 
Because the Pentagon is quite isolated from the city, "we haven't 
experienced the immediate horror but we do live in the terror of what will 
come next." She said that the city was filled with rumors, feeding into that 
sense of terror.

     The diocese had to decide if the cathedral could be a target and, after 
discussing options, they closed the cathedral and worship outside the 
buildings. With planes back in the air, many of them military jets, "people 
now are more afraid than before," she said. Churches in the diocese are 
packed and people face the difficult task of sorting through the differences
between justice and revenge.

     Dixon said that the trauma had fostered "one hope in this horror--people 
of different faiths are coming together in a new way. Since events on that 
Tuesday we have reached out to one another." For her personally, Dixon said 
that "the trauma is still with me and I haven't been able to cry yet," trying to deal 
with "much fear of the unknown."

--James Solheim is director of Episcopal News Service.