[Episcopal News Service] Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori paid a poignant visit to Port-au-Prince Feb. 8 to survey with Episcopal Diocese of Haiti Bishop Jean Zaché Duracin the devastation wrought by the Jan. 12 magnitude 7.0 earthquake.

After climbing over the ruins of the diocese’s Cathédrale Sainte Trinité (Holy Trinity Cathedral), the presiding bishop turned to Duracin and said “You should skip Lent this year; you have already had your Good Friday.”

“Yes, we can all sing Alleluias together,” Duracin replied, according to the Rev. Lauren Stanley, who accompanied Jefferts Schori on her five-hour visit.

Full story here.

Last Friday, the U.S. Treasury Department announced its support for relieving Haiti’s international debt. Debt relief for Haiti will free up financing for the country to recover from the January 12th earthquake and rebuild its shattered infrastructure.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has pledged to work with other donor agencies to alleviate this debt burden on Haiti. He said:

The earthquake in Haiti was a catastrophic setback to the Haitian people who are now facing tremendous emergency humanitarian and reconstruction needs, and meeting Haiti’s financing needs will require a massive multilateral effort… Today, we are voicing our support for what Haiti needs and deserves — comprehensive multilateral debt relief.

Full story here.

The Wall Street Journal recently interviewed Bishop Duracin in Port au Prince, as he cares for his people at a tent city he set up behind the ruins of College Ste. Pierre.  Pray that people everywhere will keep faith with the people of Haiti.

Gracious God,
I lift my voice in prayer with all the people of the world.

Surround Haiti and her people
with your loving embrace
that they may be:

supported by the world in the work of rescue and recovery;
comforted as they grieve;
strengthened as they bury their dead;
healed as they tend their wounds;
restored in faith and the
hope of things unseen;
and transformed through newness of life in Christ.

Make me an instrument
of divine love, of mercy, of hope, and of new possibility.
Give me eyes to see,
ears to hear, the will to act, and a discerning and generous heart
that I may serve you and those who suffer in whatever way I am able.
In and through the power of the Holy Spirit, I pray.  Amen.

–  From the National Cathedral Website here.

CNN — Pat Robertson, who once suggested God was punishing Americans with Hurricane Katrina, now says a “pact to the devil” brought on the devastating earthquake in Haiti. More than 100,000 people are feared dead in Haiti and Robertson continues to espouse an incomprehensible image of God sending natural disasters upon the innocent and suggesting that this might be a “blessing in disguise” for the Haitian people.  Disgraceful.

As the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, Haiti has the highest rates of mortality for mothers, infants, and children under five.  Sixty percent of the population lacks access to basic health-care services. Most Haitians survive on less than $2 a day and depend on remittances from relatives in other countries to meet their basic needs — remittances that have plummeted with the global recession. Even in the capital of Port-au-Prince, impoverished communities have few resources to cope with the acute impacts of this disaster. With an estimated 3 million people affected by the quake, Haiti is in urgent need of immediate and ongoing assistance.  Give your prayers flesh today and send a donation to one of these reputable agencies:

Episcopal Relief and Development
Yele Haiti
Oxfam America
Doctors Without Borders
World Vision
The American Red Cross (note, to designate for Haiti, send a check)
Partners in Health

God of all creation, as we weep with our family in Haiti, console us.
In this time of crisis, open our eyes to look beyond the disaster
to see Christ in our brothers and sisters in Haiti, as Christ sees us.
Be with us as we stand in solidarity with those living and working in Haiti.
Be with us in our mourning and guide our efforts to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, comfort the grieving and stand for justice.
With your mercy, sustain us at this time as we continue to work for peace and justice.  Amen.  (From Catholic Relief Services)

I’ve been intrigued by the controversy over Brit Hume’s suggestion to Tiger Woods that he consider the person and teaching of Jesus as a way to experience forgiveness for his alleged infidelity.  Christianity Today’s Sarah Pulliam Bailey recently interviewed Hume to expand on what he meant.   A few choice quotes:

“Instead of urging that Tiger Woods turn to Christianity, if I had said what he needed to do was to strengthen his Buddhist commitment or turn to Hinduism, I don’t think anybody would have said a word. It’s Christ and Christianity that get people stirred up.”

“I don’t want to be a closet Christian. I’m not going to stand on the street with a megaphone. My principal responsibility at Fox News isn’t to proselytize. But occasionally a mention of faith seems to me to be appropriate. When those occasions come, I’ll do it.”

“Christianity is a way for people who are not perfect to be saved. What [South Carolina Gov.] Mark Sanford needs is not less Christianity. He needs more of it.”

Michael Gerson in an Op-Ed piece for the Washington Post today offers fresh perspective on the backlash of criticism Hume has received for his comments.  Gerson argues that the root of anger against Hume is over his alleged religious exclusivity:

Hume’s critics hold a strange view of pluralism. For religion to be tolerated, it must be privatized — not, apparently, just in governmental settings but also on television networks. We must have not only a secular state but also a secular public discourse. And so tolerance, conveniently, is defined as shutting up people with whom secularists disagree. Many commentators have been offering Woods advice in his travails. But religious advice, apparently and uniquely, should be forbidden. In a discussion of sex, morality and betrayed vows, wouldn’t religious issues naturally arise? How is our public discourse improved by narrowing it — removing references to the most essential element in countless lives?

I’ll be honest, I admire Brit Hume for offering Tiger the invitation to explore the possibility of forgiveness in Christ.  The great Sri Lankan evangelist, ecumenical leader and hymn writer, D.T. Niles is remembered for this great quote: “Evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.“  The beggar is free to explore that direction or not.

From the New York Times:

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI will meet with the Archbishop of Canterbury next month in the leaders’ first encounter since the Catholic church moved to make it easier for disenchanted Anglicans to convert to Catholicism, a Vatican spokesman said Friday.

Archbishop Rowan Williams, the Anglican leader, was already due to visit Rome in November for ceremonies at a pontifical university to honor a late cardinal who worked for Christian unity, said the spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi. Taking advantage of the archbishop’s presence in Rome, Benedict will receive Williams on Nov. 21 at the Vatican, Lombardi said in a telephone interview.

The Vatican’s move, announced last week, to ease Anglican conversions to Catholicism is designed to entice traditionalists opposed to women bishops, openly gay clergy and the blessing of same-sex unions in the church headed by Williams.

Full article from the AP here:

From the New York Times:

VATICAN CITY — In an extraordinary bid to lure traditionalist Anglicans en masse, the Vatican said Tuesday that it would make it easier for Anglicans uncomfortable with their church’s acceptance of female priests and openly gay bishops to join the Roman Catholic Church while retaining many of their traditions.  Anglicans would be able “to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony,” Cardinal William J. Levada, the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said at a news conference here.

It was unclear why the Vatican made the announcement now. But it seemed a rare opportunity, audaciously executed, to capitalize on deep divisions within the Anglican Church to attract new members at a time when the Catholic Church has been trying to reinvigorate itself in Europe.

Full article here.

Bernard L. Madoff was sent to jail Thursday after confessing to one of the largest financial frauds in history, telling a courtroom filled with people he cheated that he was “sorry and ashamed” for bilking so many out of their life savings. One can only imagine the betrayal of trust and the agony felt by Madoff’s victims.

In my conversations around Holy Comforter, I hear the anxiety, anger, and betrayal that many are feeling over the sheer greed and irresponsibility that lies at the root of our current economic crisis. Warren Buffett expressed it well in a recent interview, “The people who behave well, are no doubt going to find themselves taking care of the people who didn’t behave so well.”

Without trust, not much in the human journey can survive. It is trust that allows us to grow, to face challenges, to become our deepest and truest selves. So how do we live when when trust is violated?  Where do we turn when confidence is shaken?

The Christian faith is rooted in a fundamental trust, a placing of confidence in the love, faithfulness, and abundance of the God who has given us our unique lives in this world. The economic downturn offers each of us a renewed choice to step back from the mind-set of fear and scarcity and recover the truth of sufficiency.  Sufficiency isn’t a measure of enough or not enough – in fact it is not an amount at all. It is a mindset based on prior experience, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough. St. Paul captures the truth of sufficiency in his Letter to the Philippians:

I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me (Phil. 4:11-13).

Paul suggests that his confidence in God has generated for him a completely new relationship with life and with everything money can buy. When we let go of the mindset of scarcity, of chasing after what we have lost, we are free to take that energy and attention and invest it in what we do have. Such a gentle and persistent effort (and I am not implying this is easy) may help us discover unimagined treasures of a kind, “where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matt. 6:20).

When trust is violated, we keep going forward with life. God’s grace inspires us to do so. The truth of sufficiency is a place to begin.

P.S. A helpful book I’m reading that has inspired new thoughts about sufficiency and rethinking our relationship with money is Lynne Twist’s, “The Soul of Money – Reclaiming the Wealth of our Inner Resources.”  While not written from an explicitly Christian perspective, it echoes the teachings of Jesus in relevant and contemporary ways.  He is the master on this subject!

I enjoyed the prayers offered at the events surrounding Barack Obama’s inauguration, and felt they captured what Phillips Brooks once described as “the communication of truth through personality.” So it was interesting to read a British perspective from the Telegraph Online by George Pitcher who puts forward the argument that American public prayer is a political act and that a more reserved public prayer life may be more authentic to the British taste.

American public prayer is a political act. Listen to Pastor Warren or Rev. Lowery – or Bishop Gene Robinson at the gig on Sunday – and they are issuing political manifestos; heralding a new political order, telling us their society is still racist or demanding equal rights for gays and lesbians.

They are not gathering the thoughts and prayers of their congregation, as we might in Britain, and offering them up to God. They are making a statement. They are telling God which way is up.

We may be increasingly familiar with this style in some of our more evangelical churches over here. The prayer leader who prays very fast on our behalf, impeaching the Almighty to make us see that we need to give more generously to aid projects in Africa and a more Christ-centred approach to Sunday school.

But generally, prayers rooted in a more diffident Anglican style are meditative aids and those who say them publicly are performing an act of Christian leadership, shepherding but not commanding.

We often envy American devotion and commitment to faith. But we may underestimate quiet, prayerful witness, uncontaminated by politics. The psalm says “Be still and know that I am God.” A more reserved public prayer life may even be more authentic.

I wonder.  Isn’t the petition, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” just a tad politcal in scope?  Read the entire column here.