Sunday, August 03, 2008

Lambeth Post-Mortem by Fr. Dan Martins

Thank you, Fr. Dan, for this hopeful assessment!

In his 1999 book Plato, Not Prozac!, Lou Marinoff contends that a substantial proportion of human mental and emotional suffering stems not from the actual events of our lives, but from our expectations about the actual events of our lives. The ants at the picnic didn’t ruin our afternoon; our expectation that the picnic grounds would be free of ants ruined our afternoon.

The Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops has now concluded after three weeks, and if the blogsphere is any indication, there is a palpable degree of human mental and emotional suffering floating in its wake. It’s certainly not suffering on the order of that experienced by those who are punched by a tsunami or a hurricane, but it’s nonetheless important to those who are feeling it at the moment. Perhaps Marinoff’s book should have been required reading for anyone with a horse in this race.

A couple of weeks ago, I took inventory of my own expectations, hopes, and wishes for this Lambeth Conference. This seems an appropriate time to audit that list and reflect on its relationship to subsequent developments:

Read the rest of this article over at Covenant.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Recently you commented about a particular Church saying, "They were a Den of Thieves" compared with TEC as "Sinners and harlots". I was once a part of the REC and felt almost exactly like you described it. Without gossiping, could you elaborate a little for me?

Timotheus

Dan Dunlap said...

I vaguely remember saying something like this, but I don't remember the context. Was it on this blog?

Anonymous said...

No. It was posted on another blog. I was just wondering the context with regard to the REC. I have since left but I saw some VERY disconcerting things and thought maybe it was only me who saw it. I still have friends in the REC but found a powerful core group held the reins to everything and covered up things that were patently wrong. Did you find a similar situation?

Timotheus

Dan Dunlap said...

"...but found a powerful core group held the reins to everything and covered up things that were patently wrong. Did you find a similar situation?"

I can answer your question in three words: Cranmer House, Shreveport.

Beyond that, I would rather not speak publicly.