JOY IS EVERYWHERE! Here’s proper counter to the bad taste of Anglican disharmony, conservative theologising, parsimonious judgments about who’s in and who’s out, who’s staying and who’s going.

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not let yourselves be slaves again. Galatians 5.1

Joy is everywhere because the Maker of the World has made it to be so. Joy is everywhere. Some of it in the Church and some of it outside of it. So let us be done, for God’s sake, with anger, mounting hatreds, prejudices, and the destructive demolition of an arm of Christ’s Church that ought to be rejoicing in God’s delight on the road to paradise.  Let’s get back to the gospel – the goodness, gladness, generosity, graciousness, glory, grandeur and greatness of the joy of God …

And joy is everywhere; it is in the earth’s green covering of grass; in the blue serenity of the sky; in the reckless exuberance of spring; in the severe abstinence of grey winter; in the living flesh that animates our bodily frame; in the perfect poise of the human figure, noble and upright; in living; in the exercise of all our powers; in the acquisition of knowledge; in fighting evils; in dying for gains we never can share. Joy is there everywhere; it is superfluous, unnecessary; nay, it very often contradicts the most peremptory behests of necessity. It exists to show that the bonds of law can only be explained by love; they are like body and soul. Joy is the realisation of the truth of oneness, the oneness of our soul with the world and of the world-soul with the supreme lover. Rabindranath Tagore

Dr Kevin Thew Forrester’s election as Bishop of Northern Michigan has failed to receive the necessary consents to his consecration, and the election has, therefore, been described as “null and void”. Concerns were aired around the question of whether his practice of Zen Buddhist meditation diluted his commitment to the Christian faith, making him unsuitable to serve as a bishop. I’m personally not at all sure that would have been the case, but leaving that aside for the moment, of all the ecclesiastical statements I’ve read and heard in recent weeks there’s something in Dr Thew Forrester’s grace-filled response to what must surely have been heart-breaking news for him that fills me with hope for the future of religious faith – and of God-centred contemplation:

I have been extraordinarily blessed and honored to walk with my friends from the Diocese of Northern Michigan over these past months as their bishop-elect. I treasure the support they have extended me and my family, as well as that I have received from Hong Kong to Holland and from Great Britain to New Zealand, and indeed from so many throughout The Episcopal Church.  As we live and move and have our being in Christ, there is truly a Holy Wisdom in all that is unfolding, and as St. John of the Cross affirms, a grace in ‘all that happens’

Joy exists to show that the bonds of law can only be explained by love. O Lord, open thou our lips. And our mouth shall show forth thy praise.