In his address to the 232nd Diocesan Convention last October, Bishop Knisely challenged the diocese to invest in ministries for young adults that form a “pipeline” of ministry. At Rhode Island College, the University of Rhode Island, and Providence colleges including Brown University, congregations and clergy are answering that call.
Both the Rev. Savannah Ponder, who serves at the Chapel of Saint John the Divine in Saunderstown three-quarters time and as chaplain at Rhode Island College (RIC) one-quarter time, and the Rev. Drake Douglas, vicar at St. Augustine and campus chaplain for the University of Rhode Island (URI), are new to the diocese and are finding benefits to serving both congregations and chaplaincies.
“Here on campus, I offered Ashes to Go which included education about ‘what was going on here’ and the opportunity for conversation,” says Ponder, who came to Rhode Island from the Diocese of Connecticut, a year ago. “Students appreciated the chance to remember people they had lost, to acknowledge the loss and grief even if they’re not quite sure what God means to them. That night, we celebrated the Prayer Book liturgy with congregants who have been doing this for years and are formed by Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent. The conversations I held in both places informed each other. The questions from young adults on the RIC campus interrogate what is core and what really matters.”
Douglas graduated from Yale Divinity School in May and was ordained to the priesthood in July. His call to St. Augustine and URI, where he served as an administrator before seminary, coincides with the beginning of the academic year. This month, he will begin a schedule of noon liturgies on Tuesdays and Thursdays for students, faculty, and administrators as well as a Wednesday evening service and meal especially geared to students. A grant from the diocese’s Congregational Development Commission will support the new program.
His previous career instilled in him a sense of “how deep-thinking this generation is,” he says. “They are looking for something hard but worth it.”
Ponder concurs. At RIC, home to many non-traditional students, she has found that “people are open to learning, growing, asking hard questions — deeper questions of meaning. The questions are those that often go unasked by those who feel they ‘should know’ that answer already after a lifetime in church: how do I fit into the world? Who is God for me?”
While Ponder had strong campus ministry experiences in college, Douglas was formed in early adulthood more by the “absence of something” after leaving the conservative denomination in which he was raised.
Campuses, he says, are “ripe mission fields, full of young adults ready to consider something big. It’s the perfect time to showcase what we [as the Episcopal Church] can do. St. Augustine was built to be a chaplaincy, but every congregation can be a mission field for the formation of the next generation.”
While students are asking existential questions, they also need to be fed. Ponder and the Rev. Benjamin Straley, who has served as rector of St. Stephen’s, Providence and campus minister at Brown and Rhode Island School of Design since 2020, are capitalizing on as they expand their campus ministries.
As a “religious life affiliate” on the Brown campus, Straley offers a Wednesday evening liturgy and dinner that attracts both local students and other young adults. “We allowed the old acronym EMBR (Episcopal Ministry at Brown and RISD) to die away and now refer to the group as ‘St Stephen’s Young Adults,’” he says. Besides food for body and soul, students are drawn by Straley’s three-year old half husky-half Australian Shepherd, Grace, whose exploits are chronicled on her @graceatbrown Instagram account.
Brown students and other young adults also volunteer on Saturdays at the parish’s Epiphany Soup Kitchen, which feeds as many as fifty people who come “looking for a meal and community” each week, Straley says.
Ponder, who this year is forming a closer relationship with RIC’s residential life team, will be offering a monthly dinner in the college’s four dorms that house about 1000 students. “The meals will be designed to create a space for community for students and a place to ask the deeper questions,” she says, as well as “a dignified way” to provide meals for students who are experiencing food insecurity.
A food pantry funded entirely by Episcopal Charities also supports RIC students without enough to eat. Located at RIC’s Unity Center, which Ponder describes as “a brave space on campus for all students to engage in meaningful and critical conversations that challenge systems of oppression,” the pantry is stocked by students Ponder takes to the store to buy goods that can feed their peers who lack access to a stove or the ability to cook.
“In the hierarchy of needs, if students are food or housing insecure, they aren’t going to learn well,” she says. “This is the important witness that the Episcopal Church has here. We feed a lot of students.”
The diocese’s investment in campus ministry is an opportunity to lay a foundation for the future, Ponder says. Her own campus ministry experience “helped with the things you might not learn in class: how to honor and respect others, how to work with folks you may not really like; how to make friends,” she says. “I think it’s invaluable work. We are scattering seeds and won’t know what will take or what will reemerge a decade from now.”
The Queen of England sent St. Paul’s, Wickford a present three centuries ago, and being thrifty New Englanders, they are still getting some use out of it.
The gift, sent by Queen Anne in 1709, comprised a two-piece silver communion set, a Bible, a Book of Common Prayer, a book of homilies and a set of paraments, or liturgical textiles. The communion set was on the altar on Queen Anne Sunday, August 4, as St. Paul’s celebrated its founding in 1706 with a Eucharist in the Old Narragansett Church.
The old church, which does not have electricity, was the parish’s home from 1707 until the current church was built nearby in 1847. During its earliest years, the parish was involved in a bitter dispute 20-year dispute with Christ Church in Stratford, Connecticut over Queen Anne’s gift, says Ruth Ann Lewis, a long-time member of the parish and the docent coordinator at Old Narragansett.
According to “Queen Anne’s Gifts to ‘Old Narragansett’ or The Case of the Contested Church Silver,” an article by Joseph W. Hammond, the controversy began in 1710 when the Rev. Christopher Bridge, St. Paul’s first priest, was reassigned to a church in Rye, New York due to “difficulties” with the Rev. John Honeyman at Trinity Church, Newport. The nature of these difficulties is not clear, but they led Henry Compton, then Bishop of London, to declare that Bridge had “committed an insolent riot upon the Church of Rhode Island.”
Bridge’s departure created a vacancy at St. Paul’s that lasted nine years. During that time, the queen’s gift was “reassigned,” to Christ Church in Stratford, Connecticut, Hammond writes. When St. Paul’s next rector, the Rev. William Guy arrived, the effort to reclaim the gift began. It would continue for almost two decades as increasingly emotional letters from the two parishes to three successive bishops of London (two of whom died during the controversy) crisscrossed the Atlantic.
Finally, in June 1729, the Rev. Samuel Johnson of Stratford wrote to the Bishop Edmund Gibson of London saying he would return the gift to St. Paul’s. “I was obliged to use a great deal of Resolution & Self-denial on this Occasion,” he wrote, “but I hope Time will by Degrees compose the Temper of those of my people who have been greatly exasperated on this Account.”
The silver was back on the altar, augmented by a silver tankard that was not part of the original gift, on Queen Anne Sunday when Bishop Nicholas Knisely preached and presided at the service using portions of the eucharistic liturgy from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.
The Rev. Jo-Ann Drake, the first woman from the diocese to be ordained to the priesthood. (Her ordination, by Bishop Frederick Belden, the tenth bishop of Rhode Island took place in the Pennsylvania parish where she was serving as a deacon.). Watch for the interview coming on August 5.
The Rev. Canon Linda Grenz, canon to the ordinary from 2013 to 2019, who was present at both the ordination of the Philadelphia 11 on July 29, 1974 and the 1976 General Convention where the Episcopal Church approved the ordination of women to the priesthood. Read and watch the interview.
The Rev. Elizabeth Habecker, former member of the diocesan Standing Committee, who was the first woman ordained in the Diocese of Maine. Watch for the interview coming August 5.
The Rev. Elizabeth (Libby) Nestor, priest and emergency room physician, who was the first woman ordained within the diocese. Watch for the interview coming August 5.
“One of the gifts we will leave the future generations of the Episcopal Church is an account of the experience of pioneering women who pushed us to recognize their call to ordained ministry in spite of fierce opposition in the wider church,” says Bishop Nicholas Knisely. “And it’s important that we allow them to tell their own stories, giving the gift of their voice and experience to the generations to come.
“That, in a nutshell, is the idea behind this Oral History project, particularly for the people of the Diocese of Rhode Island. It will give us a way to reflect on how these women responded to the Holy Spirit in moving us to a new place where all people could respond to the Spirit’s stirring in their hearts. I hope people take time to reflect on these stories. And, perhaps, even consider a similar oral history project with the elders in your own congregation.”
The interviews were conducted by the Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg.
image: The Resurrected Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene, St. Paul’s, Pawtucket
The elections of the Rt. Rev. Sean Rowe as the next presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, and the reelection of Julia Ayala Harris were perhaps the biggest news events emerging from the 81st General Convention, which ended on June 30 in Louisville, but Bishop Nicholas Knisely and the diocese’s deputies say that only begins to cover the good news coming from the convention.
For Deputy Olive Swinski, the highlight of convention was being able to participate in the Under 40 Caucus, a group of dozens of young deputies that emerged both as a political force and a supportive community. “At times it can be lonely being the youngest person in a room, so it was inspiring and life giving to be in a space with other young people who care about the governance and structure of the Episcopal Church,” she says.
For Deputy Scott Avedisian, one of the high points of the 81st General Convention, which ended on June 30 in Louisville, actually began when the convention met in Austin six years ago.
At that meeting, the Episcopal Church boisterously welcomed the Diocese of Cuba back into its ranks. But due to challenges created by the COVID pandemic, the Cuban deputation couldn’t attend the 80th General Convention in Baltimore, so the gathering in Louisville was the first post-reunion opportunity for the Cuban diocese to participate as full members of the convention from start to finish.
Avedisian’s other convention highlights also centered on the theme of coming together, and included the juncture of the Dioceses of Eastern and Western Michigan, which created the Episcopal Diocese of the Great Lakes, and the designation of Navajoland as a missionary diocese.
Those two events, along with the reunion on the Dioceses of Eau Claire, Fond du Lac and Milwaukee into the new Diocese of Wisconsin, were greeted with outpourings of enthusiasm at convention.
Deputy Dante Tavolaro, rector of St. Thomas Church, Greenville, made his mark on convention by proposing a successful amendment to the resolution establishing the group of four cities from which the site of the 2030 General Convention would be chosen. His amendment rose out of a widely shared concern that the safety of LGBTQ+ people, people of color and those who might be pregnant be taken into consideration in choosing a site for the convention.
Tavolaro’s amendment did not alter the existing group of finalists: Kansas City, Missouri; Minneapolis; Pittsburgh; Portland, Oregon; and San Juan, Puerto Rico. But it requires that the church’s Joint Standing Committee on Planning Arrangements and the Office of the General Convention to “take into consideration the legal protections and safeguards for vulnerable members of our community attending General Convention,” and it requires the two bodies to “prayerfully and seriously consider current rates of violence against the LGBTQ+ Community and Communities of Color when selecting potential host sites for General Convention.”
“I’m proud of what our deputation did and how hard they all worked,” Bishop Knisely said.
The convention was surprisingly effective, Knisely said.
“It’s hard to keep track of what’s happening in the rush of the daily schedule, but when I step back and look at all that was accomplished, it’s pretty impressive and right up there with some of the other consequential conventions I’ve attended,” he said.
The “big take-away” though, was not what did happen, but what didn’t, the bishop said.
“We went into the convention with real concerns that the level of conflict between passionate advocates for issues around the election of the officers of convention, around questions of Israel and Palestine, for Prayer Book reform and for fairness in the disciplinary process for clergy was going to derail the conversation in multiple ways. But that didn’t happen,” he said.
“What did happen was thoughtful, careful compromise between people across the church. That, to my mind, is Anglican via media at its very best.”
The people of Iglesia Episcopal San Jorge have left their cherished building behind, for the time being, at least, and that has allowed them to focus their energies on being a church.
The primarily Spanish-speaking congregation that once met in an imposing and historic stone structure in Central Falls now gathers about a mile away on Sunday mornings at St. Luke’s, Pawtucket. So far, the change has done them good.
“The congregation was experiencing a real burden dealing with the physical and financial costs of maintaining a historic building that was in poor shape,” says the Rev. Jack Lynch, the diocese’s Hispanic missioner who serves as the parish’s priest. “The move has allowed us to rethink how we are doing things, and to reach out to partner in the community, to reach out and do more mission. It has given us a new sense of direction and new ways forward.”
San Jorge’s story, in some ways, is the story of its neighborhood’s transformation, Lynch says. Central Falls was once a posh address, and St. George’s Episcopal Church was a prominent pulpit. Founded in the mid-19th century by a clergyman whose grandson — James DeWolf Perry — would one day become the bishop of Rhode Island and presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, its programs were so prestigious that people came from the tall steeple churches in New York and Philadelphia to participate in them.
Today parishioners and their neighbors speak mostly Spanish, and come from “all walks of society,” Lynch says. He ticks off a few demographic categories including small business owners, asylees, veterans and retirees. At one point before the pandemic, the church included 14 nationalities, but most members of the current congregation trace their lineage to Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.
The parish was diverse, and representative of the neighborhood, but it was not rich. During his eight years at San Jorge, Lynch came to understand that the parish’s “gorgeous church that will stand for a thousand years” was a burden the congregation could not sustain.
“We have a beautiful building that is in such need of care and maintenance that it was soaking up too much energy, and too much of our financial resources,” he says. “And that was making it difficult and unsafe to do our ministry there.”
The diocese, which was already paying much of Lynch’s salary, offered what resources and guidance it could, eventually helping the parish come to terms with its need to move.
“It’s encouraging to the parish leadership to know that the diocese did not leave us without help,” Lynch says. “It’s been encouraging to know that we have the bishop’s support and the support of the wider diocese as we try to serve the community we are committed to serve.”
Fortunately, although the congregation was leaving its building, San Jorge was not leaving its community, Lynch says. St. Luke’s, which was willing to provide a home, was only a few stops away on the same bus route.
Life has been different for the congregation since it began holding services at St. Luke’s on the first Sunday of Advent. “We are now free to focus more on discipleship and the work of the church and pastoral care,” Lynch says. The church is now hosting a weekly Bible study and a monthly healing service. “We are looking at what can we do as a church to take care of each other and hoping we can branch out and bring in new people now that we are in a new neighborhood,” Lynch says.
“We’ve been resilient,” says Judith Carreño, the clerk of the vestry. “We believe this is a good change. We miss the building and we miss our space, but we feel this is a good opportunity for us.
“I think we need to spread God’s word and I think the place we are now, we have more space, we can do more.”
The parish is also experiencing a bit of growth. Its Sunday attendance previously hovered around 70, but on three consecutive Sundays this spring, the congregation numbered more than 100.
On a recent Sunday, the parish celebrated the Feast of St. George, and Bishop Knisely was on hand to preside at the Eucharist and pledge the diocese’s support to San Jorge as it finds its way forward. He told the congregation that the diocese has no plans to sell the building, but cannot currently afford to pay for all of the repairs that would be required for the church to be habitable again.
In the meantime, San Jorge is growing where it has been replanted.
In cooperation with Province I, we hosted an evening with Rosita Stevens-Holsey, neice of the late Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray. If you were unable to make it, a recording is available here: https://vimeo.com/949955953?share=copy
There are two book studies on offer if you are interested in taking a deeper dive:
Emily Keniston plans to offer a two-part book study for young people (book ages recommended are 10-14): one on June 12th and the other on June 19th both from 7-8 PM on Zoom. The sign up form is here. Another youth minister (and high school English teacher!) has agreed to work jointly to share this offering. We will break the book into roughly two parts, and participants will do their honest best to read the assigned pages prior to the discussion. Let Emily know if you have any questions! ekeniston@episcopalmaine.net
Song in A Weary Throat: Writing & Reading with the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray
Join Canon D Littlepage and Canon Sarah Woodford of ECCT for a creative writing book study of Song in A Weary Throat. Every second Thursday from August to December 2024, we will gather over Zoom from 7-8 PM ET and discuss 90 pages of this Pauli Murray classic. Canon Sarah will also provide you with creative writing prompts before each session to help you more deeply engage with the material. Feel free to share the writing that comes from these prompts during our session, or create a larger essay from them, or just keep them to yourself! For more information, please contact swoodford@episcopalct.org.
On March 16 from 9 a.m. to noon, the Rev. Maggi Dawn — an English theologian, professor, and author — will lead a retreat for clergy at St. Columba’s, Middletown. Through small groups, worship installations, and quiet time, participants will explore biblical stories of wilderness, including Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness and stories about Elijah, Noah and Moses. Clergy can register online.
“Marcel Proust wrote that when we read someone else’s story, we are really reading about ourselves,” Dawn writes. “And all of these biblical wilderness stories act as a lens to read our own lives—our encounter with God, discerning and developing our vocations, how to deal with doubts and regrets, and how to handle life and ministry when God seems far away.”
The retreat will also mark a milestone for Dawn, who has been a Church of England priest for 24 years. During the day in Middletown, she will sign the Oath of Conformity required by Article VIII of the Episcopal Church’s Constitution and become a priest of the Diocese of Rhode Island. Bishop Knisely has named her diocesan theologian of the diocese.
Dawn’s relationship with the Diocese of Rhode Island began when she was associate professor of theology and literature and associate dean of Marquand Chapel at Yale Divinity School from 2011 to 2019. During the pandemic, former students invited her to preach, lead bible studies, and even attend online coffee hours.
“Parishes here were trying out creative ways to keep their worship lively during the pandemic, and although online worship had its limits, one of the unique features was the way it linked people up across the miles,” she said. Once lockdown restrictions eased, Dawn served as resident theologian at Emmanuel Church, Newport.
Having served both at Yale and as principal of St Mary’s College at the University of Durham, England, where she remains a professor in the Department of Theology and Religion, Dawn recognizes distinct strengths in the Church of England and the Episcopal Church.
“The Church of England does certain things beautifully — they are renowned for tradition and ritual, and the choral tradition, for instance,” she says. “One of the most fascinating posts I held was as the chaplain of King’s College, Cambridge, where I learned more about Christmas than I knew possible!
“On the other hand, the Episcopal Church has far more readily found its way to making substantial changes that the Church of England still struggles to reconcile. It’s far easier, for instance, for a woman to have a priestly ministry in the United States. The Church of England ordained women 30 years ago this year, but there are still various provisos in place to ensure that there are parishes that can refuse a woman in Holy Orders. One of the things I enjoy in the States is that I never have to waste any energy justifying my existence, and I can simply get on with the work God has called me to do.”
As diocesan theologian, Dawn will teach, preach and lead occasional programs for laypeople and clergy. “I am so delighted to have been welcomed by the Diocese of Rhode Island into a whole new chapter of ministry!” she says. “It is such a pleasure to have begun working with the clergy, staff, and congregations of the diocese. So far it has been a journey of relationship-building, and I am looking forward to developing this further.”
My name is Jacki Zahn and I’m a parishioner at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Greenville. I wanted to give you a little information on Education for Ministry.
I love learning new things, especially History. Because I never got the chance to go to college after high school, I went “later in life” and graduated from Rhode Island College at the age of 56 with a History Major.
As a former Roman Catholic, I took an Inquirer’s class with my Episcopalian friend Betsy at Christ Church in Lincoln. I attended another one at Calvary Church when my husband and I were received into the Episcopal church.
I yearned to learn more about my faith, spirituality, and the history of the church so when Rev. Susan Carpenter, at a women’s retreat years ago, informed us about EfM, I knew I was being called. I started the four-year program with mentor Donna Tornatore at Trinity Church in North Scituate.
It was a “life changing” time in my life. The first year was a challenge, studying the Old Testament, writing a spiritual autobiography, and acknowledging that the “black and white” in my life was in fact “gray”.
EfM is a four-year learning certificate program of the University of the South (Sewanee). It was started in 1975; it encompasses study, worship, and theological reflection in a small group setting. I finished my four-year program in December of 2018 and completed my mentor training in March 2023.
I will be co-mentoring EfM starting in September at Trinity Church in North Scituate with Phyllis Spaziano (who completed her program with me). We will be keeping the group small, 6 to 8 members and meeting on Saturday mornings. The concentrations for the four-year program are: Year 1, Old Testament; Year 2, New Testament; Year 3, Church History and Year 4, Spirituality/Theology. The cost of the program is $325 annually plus the cost of books. (If the cost is an issue, there are some there are some grant opportunities available.)
I’ve been praying for you over the past few months…are you being called? If you want to learn more join us for an EfM Open House at Trinity, North Scituate, Saturday, April 6 from 10 am – noon.
Recently the Rev. Della Wager Wells, rector of Emmanuel, Newport, talked with Nancy Bryan of Canticle Communications about her fifteen years of ministry with the Compass Rose Society, an organization founded in 1997 that supports the programs and ministries of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), the organization that sets the goals and direction for the Communion.
The Rev. Della Wager Wells
NB:
I would love to hear a bit about your background and particularly about how you became involved in Compass Rose. How did you learn about the organization, how far back does it go in your life?
Della Wager Wells:
Those two things are inextricably linked. This wasn’t my initial trajectory, unless you go way back to my childhood when at the age of seven I told my mother I wanted to be a Jesuit priest, and she said that was really one of the things that was off the list for me. She hadn’t told me I couldn’t do things before, so that was unusual. I’d read a children’s biography about Jesuit work and the famous Jesuits who were at work as professors and doctors and lawyers and innovators and people who really went to the intersection of God in the world. They didn’t go off and pray on behalf of others in monasteries. They were right out with the people doing the things.
At that time, I couldn’t have become an Episcopal priest, either, although weirdly and coincidentally, my great-uncle, Bishop Robert L. DeWitt, then retired bishop of Pennsylvania, was, with Bishops Daniel Corrigan and Edward Welles, censured by the House of Bishops for ordaining the first eleven women in Philadelphia in 1974.
I was 14 at the time of their ordination and the idea of priesthood still hadn’t presented itself to me. I had church on my mind and was very much an Episcopalian, so I did the next best thing and I went to law school and became a lawyer working in nonprofit finance — public projects that yielded public good — for about thirty years.
In around 2008 I was senior warden at All Saints’, Atlanta. As I was retiring, my rector, Geoffrey Hoare, invited me to go to the upcoming Compass Rose meeting in Canterbury to represent All Saints’, Atlanta. I said, yes, and besides would also go on the follow-on Compass Rose pilgrimage to the Diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf, in the Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East. Everybody thought I was a little crazy to go when I didn’t know anyone, but I went to the other side of the world where everything from the temperature of the air, to the currency, to the language, to everything about the cultural context, was different. It felt like the noise level dropped and all of a sudden what was important was how we were alike instead of how we were different. And that was my epiphany.
I realized at that point that that was what I was supposed to be doing, and I started to take one seminary course every semester while still practicing law full-time. When I finally retired in 2015 and went to Yale Divinity School, I actually had a full year to my credit, although I didn’t use it because I loved divinity school. It was the Compass Rose Society that helped me see that I was made to be a missionary and that I needed to be working in the same area, but with a different client, for God.
After I graduated, I had a fellowship in Jerusalem for a year, before returning to the States to begin my work at Emmanuel, where I’ve been ever since.
NB:
And how has your work with Compass Rose continued?
DWW:
Actively, in that I never am far separated from it, and it infuses everything that we do here at Emanuel. Even in the most parochial context, as I said earlier, it’s when we see ourselves in another whole context and see what is really essential about us that we understand ourselves most fully. …
The Compass Rose Society is not a fundraising entity or a relief and development entity. We have other avenues for that. We have Episcopal Relief & Development, we have the Anglican Alliance, and others. The Compass Rose Society is what removes barriers to relationship.
The origin story of Compass Rose is that then-Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey visited South Sudan in 1994. When the Archbishop’s staff asked the primate’s representatives how many people would come for communion, the response was, oh, we won’t have communion. Upon further conversation, the archbishop’s staff was told that it was “because we have no bread, we have no wine.” Back at Lambeth Palace, George Carey summoned everybody into his office and just said, fix this, fix this.
And so the Compass Rose Society was formed. Our fundraising is to help the Anglican Communion Office operate in aid of the mission of connection of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the global Communion: to somehow get the bread and the wine there. And that’s essentially what we do.
NB:
I’m wondering how you’ve seen your parish and the diocese of Rhode Island benefit from these relationships that Compass Rose makes possible.
DWW:
I think these relationships help us to see that we’re not alone and to connect in critical times, such as the climate crisis, to those who suffer most even while having the least impact. At Emmanuel, I’ve tried to help us see and connect to the land. For example, we started a community garden up in the churchyard.
As we harvested the garden’s produce, we brought the tomatoes forward at the offertory. I talked about how that is very East African — that produce and honey and goats and chickens, they all come forward at the offertory. People bring their offerings of their produce, and then auction them off afterwards with that income becoming an offering to the church. And so, we at Emmanuel brought the produce from our garden forward for blessing. The time, the riches, our gifts are not only the bread and the wine and the money that comes forward, but also what we’re growing together in community, which includes relationship, concern about responding in love, all of those things.
We’ve also had visitors. Bishop Emmanuel Bwatta of the Diocese of Western Tanganyika in ACT has visited us and preached here, along with others from around the Communion, particularly last year while I was on medical leave. I had friends from all over the Communion coming in to preach. I think that the parish has come to understand themselves better by seeing that our experiences are not normative of the rest of the Communion. We explore and see what our traditions mean to us by seeing them as different from others and understanding better what they are.
Even something like the use of liturgical colors. I talk a lot about how Jesus is not quoted in any of the four gospels and none of the ancient mothers and fathers of the faith wrote that you can only use green in Ordinary Time and you can only use purple during Advent. That other congregations in the Episcopal church use blue and the Church of South India uses saffron, which is absolutely lovely.
And it was amazing how that lit people up both as a difference and as a discovery of what a liturgical color could feel like, having not necessarily appreciated where it came from or why we used it before. That’s where difference helps us.
I think also difference helps us in that if we aren’t engaged with, if we’re not hungry for — not just tolerant of — and yearning for diversity, then we’re missing a little. It’s easy to become self-focused and idolatrous looking at ourselves and being self-focused.
NB:
I understand that your trip this past summer to Tanzania was the first Compass Rose Society visit there since before the pandemic. How did that span of time change the visit? How did it change the relationships, having not seen each other for so many years?
DWW:
What was different this time was that this was the first time we’ve ever visited a province and not a diocese. We were very spread out! We visited the Diocese of Zanzibar, we visited the Diocese of Dar es Salaam, we visited the Diocese of Tanga and the Diocese of Dodoma, and we visited St. John’s University. So, we were all over from the middle of the country in the political capital, and back out to the financial capital on the coast, over to Zanzibar, up to Tanga. Tanga is also on the coast, so we were all over the place and that was big. I’m looking forward to developing those relationships. I had most recently seen Archbishop Maimbo Mndolwa in England in autumn of 2022.
I’ve spent time with him before several different times. This was the first time I had seen Bishop Emanuel Bwatta of the Diocese of Western Tanganyika since he was here in Newport in January of 2020. But we talk on the phone all the time and on WhatsApp; the relationships don’t go away. They don’t go away. It was wonderful to be back again. I lived there in the summer of 2016 for my internship and to be back in Tanzania and to stretch out and speak a little bad Swahili, kindergarten Swahili. It was fun.
NB:
Is there a story from Tanzania that highlights that relationship building?
DWW:
I have two. First is the capacity that we have, any of us with material resources, to do good. … Church is really important and God is really important in Tanzania. … They don’t divide the world up between what is sacred and what is secular. They don’t say, okay, this is the holy pile and this is the daily pile, the mundane pile. We put food and agriculture and economic development and healthcare and education in the daily mundane pile and put Sunday worship in the holy pile, and that’s got a special gold ring around it, a halo.
They don’t do that. Hence, they have enormous integration in incarnate effectiveness every single day. Trinity Wall Street made an economic development grant to the diocese of Dodoma and built a downtown office building. Guess who the development officers are in East Africa? Typically the mamas, the Mothers’ Union, is in charge of economic development because they are in charge of the family, which is also an inverse, right? It’s different from what you’d expect. But the mamas are in charge. They do all investment and all singing. The building was opened ceremonially by the president of Tanzania the day after we left.
Although it hadn’t been it finished out yet, the building was leased up by the National Bank and by other national corporations, producing investment dollars to operate the social services and every service of the church. The church functions in a very vital way, not relegated to Sundays for an hour, but “all the time,” as they say.
And the other story is that my husband and I spent time in the Diocese of Western Tanganyika, a place where I’ve had a relationship for probably close to 20 years with the Rt. Rev. Emmanuel Bwatta. While we were there, I preached one Sunday to 1600 people. I’d never done that before. It was ecumenical and interfaith because it was in a fishing village where there were Muslim people and Christian people, Anglican people. All of the young people were there to support their friends, with 180 youth confirmed that day by Bishop Emmanuel.
… I think sometimes in the United States, we tend to think that we’ve got everything under control and that we’re going to manage this away and we’re going to manage that away. And we’re just not focused on holy things. And by the time we’ve carved God out of every area of our lives, we’ve got an hour on Sundays and it’s like, “see you next week, call you if we need you.” But there’s nothing else going on. They really integrate faith and the presence of God into their whole lives and there’s something really holy about that that’s compelling.
NB:
What have I not asked about? What would you want folks in the diocese to know about the Compass Rose Society?
DWW:
Our lectionary for Sunday (John 1:43-51; this interview was conducted on January 17, 2024) was “come and see,” and I’ve always said that Compass Rose was a “come and see” ministry. I had no idea in 2008 when I went to the Compass Rose annual meeting: I didn’t know about the Anglican Communion, I didn’t know if it was a letterhead, or if it was an office building. Was it an address? I had no idea. I didn’t know what the Anglican Communion was. And when I found out, I was gobsmacked, and my life was changed forever. It’s a “come and see” ministry.
As a “religious life affiliate” on the Brown campus, Straley offers a Wednesday evening liturgy and dinner that attracts both local students and other young adults. “We allowed the old acronym EMBR (Episcopal Ministry at Brown and RISD) to die away and now refer to the group as ‘St Stephen’s Young Adults,’” he says. Besides food for body and soul, students are drawn by Straley’s three-year old half husky-half Australian Shepherd, Grace, whose exploits are chronicled on her @graceatbrown Instagram account. 
