Monday, July 20, 2009

Thank You, Team All Saints!

We want to at least BEGIN to thank everyone on "Team All Saints" who helped make our work and witness in Anaheim such a stunning success.

To call out everybody individually would probably take 'til Homecoming, but let's call out "by title" as a beginning:

Our fabulous booth design and implementation team and those who set up, staffed and organized what was a wonderful presence in the Exhibit Hall.

Our brilliant choirs and their fabulous director who provided the amazing music for the July 10th Integrity Eucharist.

Altar guild members and vergers who helped provide the liturgical "stuff' for the service, and all the WONDERFUL ushers who took All Saints hospitality "behind the Orange Curtain."

The Peace & Justice dept. for organizing the "All Saints Action a Day" -- a virtual incarnation of putting faith into action.

Everyone who came up around the "Here I am, Send me!" t-shirt project and provided such a colorful, positive witness to the Archbishop of Canterbury's visit.

The members of our Accessibility Ministry whose witness to the whole church made All Saints very proud and the wonderful Healing Eucharist that was such a gift.

Those who marched with the Disney workers in their labor action and helped keep economic justice out front as a critical gospel issue.

Our always-fabulous custodial team who helped so much with the details of getting all the "stuff" shipped, set up and organized.

The wonderful diversity of staff members who came to share in the work and witness.

And to all who "held down the fort" here in Pasadena -- especially those who provided administrative support from afar and colleagues who covered for those of us "otherwise occupied" during the last two weeks.

It was an extraordinarily successful convention ... as I noted in my legislative wrap up post: "As noteworthy as the content of the resolutions is the context. These resolutions passed not by narrow margins after rancorous debate. They passed by overwhelming consensus after respectful dialogue that left no doubt that those who gathered in Anaheim are committed to an inclusive Anglicanism that keeps at the table all who desire so to do."

There is now much work ahead of us as we strive to make those resolutions realities, but as we do so we recognize that we stand on the shoulders of those who have worked so long and hard down through the decades -- including our Rector Emeritus George Regas.

His prophetic work in the 70's on women's ordination and groundbreaking advocacy for same-sex blessings in the 90's helped pave the way for the work we did in Anaheim these last two weeks and contributed directly to the "inch of the planet" reclaimed through the dedicated work and witness of those on the ground in Anaheim in 2009.

You can read more about that here.
Photos are online here.

And now ... back to our regularly scheduled work of turning the human race into the human family! :)

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