The Mosher Pit

Clergy and lay delegates at the annual council, faced with a slashed budget for Shrine Mont camp scholarship budgets, were strident in their call to have the funding restored.

But of course, when you restore something in one line, you must cut it somewhere else, right?

So it was put to the council: how many of you would be willing to give $100 now, to restore this funding?

Hands around the room shot up. Tellers went around to do a count, and instead got checks and cash donations, on the spot. The estimated return to the program was $19,000.

Bishop Lee, noting this unusual development, said, “Can you imagine Congress doing this?”

Discussion that followed underscored the importance of taking this back to your congregations.

GIVE!

Posted in Diocese of Virginia by: Helen
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I’m at the press table, although if any of you are here you’re not likely to be reading this since you’re at Eucharist.

But I will probably be here tomorrow, too, so please find me!!

Posted in Diocese of Virginia, Episcopal Church by: Helen
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(I wrote this on Friday after the first day of annual council.)

Me and faith is a funny mix.

It occurred to me today that the chain of events that culminated in my break with faith had to do with mysteries of childhood being shattered. Two things happened between 1980 and 1983 that really messed with the stable universe that my parents tried to provide me. It’s hard to talk about them publicly, because I love my parents. It’s a very hard line to draw when you are a compulsive writer and honesty has an edge that’s painful to share.

But what I can share is that both my mother and my father lost their respective jobs during that time. My father spent a few dark years as a traveling salesman (when he was a psychologist by trade), and my mother was let go from her post as organist of the church I grew up in.

Though I didn’t understand it at the time, there was a dot.dot.dot that kind of trailed off after I was confirmed in 1982. I won’t go into the details, but I went from being the star of the christmas pageant and first in my class at everything to being a lost child who didn’t always do well in school and really could care less about church.

And today I saw the kind of kid I could have been, running around at Council being a young leader. It was kind of a shock, because in seeing that reflection of another Helen, I became her.

It was a beautiful thing. And yet it makes me sad. I am–fortunately–in a position to restore that balance to my life, but the more I find that my troubled relationship with my parents was what _caused_ my break from faith for 15 years, the more that anger comes back. I thought I had wrestled through all that during counseling–both the therapist kind and the pastoral kind, but I see now that forgiving my parents for what transpired between them and me during my teens and twenties is only part of the problem.

I also need to forgive them for what transpired between me and God.

Posted in Diocese of Virginia, Episcopal Church, Life, Memories, Religion by: Helen
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So it turns out that Charlotte Hays, co-author of Being Dead Is No Excuse, is a fourth cousin of mine. (My mom is very obsessive about genealogy, and that side of the family is very well documented.)

It also turns out that she is planning to visit Richmond next weekend. She lives in my neck of the woods.

It also turns out that I am going to the 211th Annual Council of the Diocese of Virginia next weekend, also in Richmond.

Mom called me tonight to enquire whether I might be interested in saving her some train fare.

Faint!!!!

Posted in Diocese of Virginia, Episcopal Church, Family, Random, Writing by: Helen
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