There is an amusing picture of our beloved Bishop at Lambeth along with one of the daily reports he has filed.

Please note that although the Bishop is behind bars, they are not there to keep him in, but to keep the press out!

Note also some further reports and links by Jordan Hylden.

The theological struggle at Lambeth meets the 21st century with tools of 20th century propaganda. Here's a fascinating critique of one "documentary" being shown to the Lambeth bishops.

Possibly you know the name Pauline Kael. A Canadian newspaper has a reflection on her work as a movie critic here.

Toward the end of her career she was heard to say, "When we championed trash culture we had no idea it would become the only culture."

So I'm reflecting on what our culture, or our national heritage, or our Gospel cost those who passed it on to us. And I'm thinking of the bishops of the Anglican Communion gathered for the Lambeth Conference.

It is so easy to throw away that which is placed in our hands at no cost to us. But someone has paid in the past, and someone will pay in the future as a result of our care and stewardship today, for good or ill.

At First Things, Jordan Hylden reviews the situation before Lambeth Conference:

Unfortunately, there are several factors in play that will make the Lambeth bishops’ task very difficult. Most fundamentally, the bishops will have to confront a theology, held by many of their own members, which places little value on doctrinal unity and scriptural authority and instead exalts near-unbounded freedom and diversity in matters of faith and ethics...  As Rowan Williams recently put it, the crisis is such that Anglicans are no longer sure that they can recognize each others’ ministries, or even that they are speaking the same language of faith.

UPDATE: Jordan has filed further reports and links.

Bishops invited to the Lambeth Conference have been asked to bring along video presentations of the Church life back home. You can see the video Bishop Howe will take along at this link.

Watch for a glimpse of All Saints' in Lakeland! And see what else the Lord is doing around our diocese!

And, incidentally, the narrator is Rev. Michael Matheny, deacon at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke in Orlando, ordained in the same class with our own deacon, Rev. Paula Beikirch!  

"A decade after the extermination of one in eight Rwandans, after the Hutus turned on the Tutsis and even some of their own, the two tribes had to learn to live together."

But that's only a background detail to the story in the Washington Post. The story is about a woman who needed to find a subject for a documentary film, as part of her thesis.

While her fiancee was dumping her.

Florida native Laura Waters Hinson has now won the Student Academy Award for best documentary, As We Forgive. She learned some things about forgiveness herself, too. Like that moment her ex-fiance, who had studied for the priesthood, looked her up and asked her to marry again. He asked something else, too.

Our troubles in the Episcopal Church contribute an unexpected silver lining to her story.

"Reconciliation. I think it's one of the most challenging subjects anyone can face."

The Get Religion blog loved the newspaper story.

After reading it you may also be interested in this interview with Laura.

"There's a show on television called Wife Swap, in which two women switch homes and families for two weeks. It took me less time than that to figure out the fascination, which is that it allows us to see other people at home when we're not there. All we know of other people's private lives are fictional depictions, and the sometimes stories other people tell. But watching Wife Swap, all is on display. Quotidian minutiae in profusion. Absent Wife Swap or Sundays in America, we run the risk of thinking that the way we do it, is the way it's done. Forced to look at other people's parenting or paper towel consumption, their pastor's pulpit antics or provincial piety, we start to look at how we do things in our kitchens, in our sanctuaries."

That's Linda McCullough reviewing a new book by Suzanne Shea, Sundays in America. Shea spent one year visiting a different church each week and then writing her opinion about it. Take a look at Linda's review to get a sense of what Shea thinks about them... us.

--Thomas Howard, On Being Catholic