Kanuga Conference Center is a beautiful setting. At least once the sun comes out. Bronwyn, Ruth-Ann, and I were fortunate enough to be housed in one of the cottages overlooking Kanuga Lake. I think these are Cottages 3 and 4.
I played with the sepia tone setting on my camera.
Yes, that is a cross you see across the lake. Here's a closer look at it. I was playing with the reflections on the water.
We arrived for the 10:00 a.m. regular morning service to find that Newlin had erected a canopy in the center of the Labyrinth.
Although weather forecasts predicted the rain would end early in the afternoon, it didn't.
We set up under the canopy and used umbrellas.
After the service coffee and donuts, along with the bag lunches, were served from the altar and another table set up for distributing food.The crisis of the Nez Perces and the war that came from it fell within the period usually called the "Civil War era" and dated between 1861 and 1877. This label presumes that the preeminent force of its time was the war to save the union. The war, the developments that caused it, and its historical aftershocks dominate not only the story but also the terms of significance. How valuable an event is to understanding mid-nineteenth-century American history depends on whether and how much it has to do with the Civil War, its causes, and its aftermath.He spends the rest of the preface setting out his premise of a "Greater Reconstruction" and finishes by writingThe problem with this big picture is that many developments with great long-term consequences have little or no place in it...
What do the overland migration to Oregon, Protestant missions to the Pacific Northwest, and Indians' prophetic religions have to do with the crusade against slavery and the secession crisis? Where is a common thread to emancipation, the Freedmen's Bureau, and federal occupation of the South on the one hand and western railroad surveys, reservations, Indian wars, and Yellowstone National Park on the other?
Those broad points are best shown by giving them body through particular human experiences. Nothing shows that better than the story of the Nez Perces.The Nez Perces were not the only Native Americans who were forced onto a reservation, nor were they the only Native Americans who maintained friendly relations with the growing United States and still have their land taken from them. Most of us are familiar with the case of the Cherokees and the Trail of Tears. The Nez Perces did not adopt the "white man's" ways as fully as the Cherokee. Their story is more one of a clash of cultures.
The same reasoning was used again at a later point in the government's dealings with the Nez Perces. Unfortunately for the government, because of the structure of Nez Perces society some of the bands did not sign the treaty. Instead, for a variety of reasons, including retaliatory attacks on white settlements, they decided to head for Canada. So began the Nez Perce War.The overwhelming consensus in the press and official statements was that the Nez Perces were in the right. Their lands were being illegally invaded. The intruders were called human bilgewater...In response, the Nez perce were said to be models of patience and reason, as fit their unblemished record of friendship. In May 1862, Oregon Senator James W. Nesmith delivered an extended hymn to the Nez Perces to his colleagues in the U.S. Senate. The Nez perces were handsome, intelligent, and virtuous, faithful to their word and protective of American citizanes. in return, they had suffered abuses and betrayals. Not that they were unique. From Maine to Oregon, Nesmith said, the government had consistently pledged what it could not deliver. Agents and missionaries had reduced Indians to "squalid thieves, vagabonds, and prostitutes." And now the old pattern was unfolding again. A corrupt and corrupting government was failing its responsibilities.
And Nesmith's conclusion? The Nez Perces must sign another treaty and give up more land. They had to be protected, and protection wasn't possible on the 1855 reservation. the only chance for protection was to have a much smaller reservation. Doing justice meant dealing with the results of botched policy by repeating what had been done in the first place, with the promise that the government would mend its ways, and right soon.
Yet if Rowan Williams succeeds in his misguided effort to establish a single-issue magisterium that determines a church's influence within the communion, a significant risk remains. That risk is run not by the Anglican left, which has nothing practical to lose, nor by the Anglican right, whose leaders embarrass less easily than Donald Trump and don't fear public opprobrium. Rather, the parties at risk are the Church of England and the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury, which may find themselves at the head of a communion synonymous with the agenda of the American right.Hat tip to Thinking Anglicans.
“The Instruments of Communion,” now being given supposed histories and purposes different from their actual origins and being made vehicles for the controlled invention of identity, are of relatively recent origin. The Lambeth Conference, first convened in 1867 by Archbishop Charles Thomas Longley for providing “Brotherly Counsel and encouragement,” gathered amidst much controversy. Several bishops of the Province of York refused to attend, and Dean Arthur Stanley denied the group the use of Westminster Abbey. In neither its origin nor in its decades of meeting was the Lambeth Conference ever intended as a general conference of the whole church or as a legislative body. Not until 1969 did the Anglican Consultative Council first convene. Only in 1978 did the Primates begin to gather regularly, and they refused to define those meetings as any kind of higher synod. The Lambeth Conference of 1998 (Resolution 3.6) stated that the activities of the Primates should not interfere with the judicial authorities of the several constituent provinces. All of these gatherings were collegial in character designed to further communication and bonds of fellowship among the vastly different churches of what was evolving as an imagined worldwide Anglican Communion.And this little gem:
During most of the twentieth century spokesmen for the Church of England and for those various churches around the world in one way or another derived from that church have emphasized the reasonableness and moderation of Anglicanism, and thus the Church of England displayed itself for most of the past century. But in point of fact, throughout much of its earlier history the Church of England was an actively persecuting church. Under Elizabeth it persecuted recalcitrant Roman Catholics. After the Restoration in l660 the Church of England drove out the Protestant Nonconformists. Thereafter until the late l820s the Church of England benefited from legislation that prevented Protestant Nonconformists and Roman Catholics from participating in English political life.And shortly thereafter he names what the Archbishop of Canterbury is doing:
Frank has articulated clearly and concisely what many of us have been thinking and unable to articulate so well.Knowingly or unknowingly, consciously or unconsciously, the present Archbishop of Canterbury seeks to revive this tradition of centralized arbitrary exclusion and chastisement.
We've been planning this since late Spring. It is one component of a dreamed spirituality center at Grace Episcopal Church. It is the first piece we've finished.
So, with the parking lot cleaned, four of us gathered to lay out and paint the labyrinth. Here are Mom, Carol, and Lois as we prepare to start chalking at 1:00 p.m. Starting with a 12 foot center circle, we drew 12 concentric circles, with each of the 11 outer circles 28" from the one inside it. These would become the waling path. Once the circles were down, I went around drew lines to mark places where the path would turn, and where we needed to erase parts of the circles so the path would be continuous. It took approximately 2 1/2 hours to chalk the labyrinth. Lois walked the chalk labyrinth to make sure we had the path drawn correctly.
Using 4" rollers and lavender paint we centered the painted lines on the chalked ones. We put the last of the paint down at about 6:45 p.m. and spent 15 minutes cleaning up. Then Mom and I walked the finished labyrinth, but only in to the center. We were too tired to spend 20-30 more minutes walking back out.
I spent the afternoon at church with three other parishioners laying out and painting an 11 circuit labyrinth on the parking lot. We started chalking it at 1:00, finished painting at 6:45, and were cleaned up by 7:00. Then two of us walked it--in, anyway. We were too tired to walk back out.