Bishop’s Annual Address The Rt. Rev. Bonnie A. Perry, Eleventh Bishop

Convention Address 2021

October 22, 2021

The Rt. Rev. Dr. Bonnie A. Perry

I propose to show that we are here and nowhere else and God (the maker of heaven and earth) has called us to this place, this eternal now, to listen, to hear, to learn and then in the midst of our own wounds to offer healing and hope, from this time forth and forever more.

Come Holy One. Come Holy One. Come Holy One. May we listen, may we hear.

Here we all are. Together again, sort of, but not really, but doing the best we can in the times that we have. Here we all are—again—still. I am sure that at some point in my tenure in the Diocese of Michigan, we will have a convention where I will see your legs. I will see all of you and you will see all of me, and we will behold each other, friends and not strangers. Yet even so, now, we behold each other—as much as we can.

Friends our program year has begun, we are trying and we are doing. Some of us are beyond excited that we can now have coffee hour and Sunday morning breakfasts. We are back at it with face-masks and choirs, slowly creeping back to our pews. Yet this is not really what we want. It’s not been what we wanted for more than 19 months.

735,000 people in our country have died with 45 million cases of COVID-19 in the United States. 23,000 people have died from COVID-19 here in Michigan. More than a million of us in this state have reported contracting this disease. We have all been affected, our children, our parents, grandparents, beloved friends from church, neighbors down the hall, gone lost, ones who we see no more. Loved ones who died suddenly in their sleep or after long protracted declines. Some of us have recovered from this fearsome virus, some without lasting effect, others lacking taste or smell, continually short of breath, some of us have recovered but in the process now find ourselves blind because of secondary complications. We are marked. We are scarred. We are not the same.

When I speak with our clergy I hear of the people who have died from COVID and now as we begin to open up a bit, clergy report an uptick in parishionersand friends who are dying from other diseases, letting go now, as if they have held on long enough. Our mourning is stilted, muted and masked as we quietly design funeral services that we hope will not become super spreader events. We are Episcopalians so neither irony nor science are lost

on us.

We are making our way, our 70 + communities of faith. A number of congregations are engaged in or finishing very successful capital campaigns. We are seeing record number of people at Bible Studies, now that we can quote scripture from the arm chairs in in our living rooms. People from around the country are routinely attending our on-line worship services. We have lay readers in England and Snowbirds in Florida who are regularly

present on the screen. Our Sacred Ground groups are legion, we’re working together to relieve medical debt in Washtenaw County, holding vaccine clinics in Detroit, Cranbrook, Lincoln Park and Pontiac. Some of our food pantries have more need than we have ever had before and they are rising to the challenge every single week. We have displays on our lawns that bear witness to this country’s history of racial violence, we have labyrinths that offer spiritual solace to anyone who ventures down their paths. We have offered showers, water and created jobs. We created groups looking into proposed election laws of our state. We’ve baptized people, married couples, received and confirmed more than a hundred people this summer. We’ve eaten ice cream, ridden our bikes, thrown water balloons, eaten ice cream, crashed down slides in a bouncy house, and did I mention, we’ve eaten ice cream…We’ve reworked the ordination process, the search process and we have more people praying the daily office than a cloistered monastery. We can worship via livestream, hybrid, Facebook Live, You Tube and Zoom. If two and a half years ago someone had said that 90% of our congregations would have virtual interfaces, we would have quietly and politely invited them to return to the planet earth.

We are amazing. You all are amazing. I am so thankful for the lay and clergy leadership of our diocese. We are amazing. You are, we are doing it and it is so hard. Everything we pull off is like slogging five more feet uphill in a river of molasses. We are doing it, but seriously how much longer can we?

I don’t know about all of you, but I want it all to end. I’m over the new, I want to go back to the old or move forward to the next, but being mired in the muck and glue of this time is sapping the life blood out of me.

Isuspect I am not alone.

I want this done.

The continuous anxiety, the bitter fear and dread around the edges of everyone and everything: should I hug, should I not, did they get too close, did I pick something up, are they vaccinated? They look vaccinated…Am I passing something on? Is my throat sore? Mask on mask off? Should I get a third shot? What about everyone in the world who doesn’t have the luxury to decline a vaccine?

It is all draining my spirits and threatening to suck me down.

I want tomove forward or backward. I want to move on.

This then is where the Rule of St. Benedict —a monastic code from the 6th century— authored by Benedict of Nursia comes into play. Particularly a Benedictine Model presented in the College of Congregational Development. The College for Congregational Development—the program my colleague Melissa Skelton talked about just a few minutes

ago.

The College uses an adaptation of the Rule of Benedict as a means of reflecting on where we as individuals and communities of faith find ourselves in our world. While the actual Rule

of St. Benedict goes on for forty some odd pages, The College for Congregational Development uses Anglican Theologian Esther de Waal’s distillation of the ruleinto three essential parts.

De Waal, focuses upon about Benedict’s emphasis on Stability, Obedience and Conversion of Life.

Stability has to do with being able to find God in the place, in this time, with these people. Our focus on stability, calls us not to wish ourselves to another time or place, or to a better set of circumstances. Stability from Benedict’s perspective is to say—God is here in this place now. And here, right here I will seek God.

Obedience is as de Waal says, “The lifelong process of learning…listening to the word of God, to the [people of our community] the brethren…The Latin root for obedience is obedire—which literally means “listen to or pay attention to”. So a key part of obedience is to immerse ourselves in listening to God’s word in scripture, in prayer, and in silence. To listen deeply to our families, community members, friends, and the world. In our personal prayer where is the silence so that we may hear? In our corporate prayer— profound points of silence, where are they? so that we may listen deeply and hear what the spirit is saying and how is the spirit being revealed in what we have just heard—how might it be revealed in what we are about to say or sing?

The last stage is what de Waal refers to as, Conversion of Life. How having stayed rooted in where we are, in the context we find ourselves, in not wishing it away, how have we heard God and and how now is God inviting us to an inner transformation with Christ? What new invitation is on the horizon to turn toward Christ? What is being offered?

In our stability, and acceptance of who and how we are now, in our profound attempts at listening to God and to our community, what are we being called to be--as individuals and as communities of faith.?

Friends, I believe that we are at the point in this Benedictine cycle where we are being called to do nothing other than accept the mire, muck andglue of the Fall of 2021. We are here, not in the Fall of 2019, nor are we in the Fall of 2023 or 2024. We are here and we know that God is not anywhere else but here. With us. Let us own our tiredness, our sadness, grief, pain and our anger at what has befallen us. Let us fully immerse ourselves in this time with our God.

Then, let us be the people, the individuals and the communities, the congregations who listen—listen deeply. Let us pay attention, let us ask how people are and listen and hear them (as Feminist Theologian, Nelle Morton says,) let us hear them into speech. Let us hear them into hope.

Stop worrying about what you will do, and whether or not everyone will come back or if new people will ever join us. Instead for this time ,in this moment, let us open the doors of

people’s hearts and bind up their wounds, our own wounds, by being rooted and listening with every pore in our bodies. Let us listen. Let us Hear. Stop and listen.

Then, we will know. Then and only then will we know what invitation on the horizon, is being offered to us, through the one, who says, “Be Still and Know that I am God.”

My friends it is my breath-taking joy to be your bishop.

In Christ,