On September 17, 18, and 19 Matt O'Connor of St. James', South Pasadena, and Laura Siriani of St. Paul's, Tustin, will represent Bloy House at the annual Seminarian Leadership Conference sponsored by Episcopal Evangelism Society.  This year the conference will take place on the campus of the University of the South at Sewanee Seminary in Sewanee, Tennessee.  Participants will have the opportunity to get to know seminarians from other Episcopal seminaries across the country and will also be a part of a conversation on our current global ecological crisis and how the church might make a faith response to that crisis.  Participation in this conference is just one of numerous ways that Bloy House works to create opportunities for engagement with seminarians and other church leaders from across the country.

Over the next weeks Episcopalian from across the diocese who did not have an opportunity to attend the Bishop Coadjutor Search Committee's listening events will have an opportunity to provide online feedback on what is important in our bishop's search.  When you begin to ponder the resources that are a part of our diocesan life, we hope you will remember to name Bloy House in those resources.  Is it important to you that Bloy House continue?  Is it important to you that priests and deacons are formed together for ministry to the church? Is it important that there is a resource lay persons can utilize in building their own knowledge and skills for ministry and personal spiritual development?  If so, please let your voice be heard in the process so that members of the search committee will also be aware what an important ministry Bloy House has in the life of this diocese. 

The August issue of Diakoneo, a publication of the Association of Episcopal Deacons, included an article by our own deacon-to-be Lisa Jacoby describing her experiences in her Episcopal Relief and Development Pilgrimage to Ghana. Congratulations to Lisa as she finds ways to live out her own diaconal calling and support the wonderful and important work of Episcopal Relief and Development! Lisa was privileged to make this pilgrimage along with Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.  The article contains a wonderful story about how Bishop Jefferts Schori was received by a group of Ghanan children who were receiving ashes on Ash Wednesday. To learn more about Diakoneo Magazine or to learn more about the diaconate visit www.episcopaldeacons.org.

By Sylvia Sweeney

Below is the sermon that Dean Sweeney preached at the opening Eucharist of the new academic year.

I once heard it said that when you imagine Mary, do not imagine the sweet passive faces produced by the renaissance artists. Imagine instead a fiery, ferocious, determined, poor Palestinian mother protective of her children, devoted to her people, and determined to stand with God in the struggle for justice without faltering ... until justice is done! This is the Mary we encounter in today's lesson. Not the meek and submissive white-washed Mary the elitist patriarchal church turned her into. Hear the voice of Mary in today's Gospel passage. Hear the strength with which Luke portrays her. Hear her passion. Hear her pain and hear her struggle to know freedom.

A few weeks ago I was at the bishop coadjutor search committee listening event and I was talking to a woman who teaches communications at a community college. She had recently asked her class, "How many of you consider yourself spiritual people?" and every single student in the room raised their hand. She asked, "How many of you consider yourself religious?" and not a single one of them raised their hand.  Spiritual and religious were in that setting words that not only are not synonymous with one another, but somehow even seemed exclusive of one another. For the students in that room, to be spiritual almost by definition precluded being religious.

How did that come to be?  And why are we as Christians not more shocked and shamed by that contemporary reality?

You see, I think people in the world are smarter than we often give them credit for. I think they know in their heart of hearts that Mary and her son were revolutionaries, but if they go to church they will not find Mary the revolutionary, Mary the agitator, Mary the activist, Mary the freedom fighter, Mary the prophet. They will most often in church find a tame, watered down, obey-the-authorities, kneel- in-subservience-and-devotion, meek-and-mild Mary. And what could milquetoast Mary possibly teach them about living in our violent, conflict-laden world of ecological devastation, drive-by shootings, and assault rifles?  In a world where every minute of every day good and evil are at war, what can the church's sweet mother Mary teach us about living as spiritual beings?   

Well maybe not much.  But if we are brave enough to together take a fierce and searching moral inventory of the history of the church as Dr. Ash will invite us to do, perhaps we can learn a great deal about how to find and create good in this world. And perhaps if we are strong enough and courageous enough to speak truth to power, then the church can again become a beacon of hope, of justice, of a better way for the world around us.  

What we have both received and helped create in the time since Pentecost set the world on fire is wimpy church.  You all know what wimpy church looks like.  It's the place where everyone pretends to get along and then complains about each other in the parking lot. It's the place where nothing controversial is said or prayed for fear of offending someone and having them leave, taking their pledge with them. Wimpy church happens when people of power can come to church Sunday after Sunday and never have to worry about being threatened or brought up short by the message because our lovely liturgical medium has become the message.  "Beauty" becomes the message and everything at church seems just a little, well, otherworldly and separate -- because that is oh so much less uncomfortable than facing into the fire and helping the world around us make sense out of all this real life mess we have to contend with!  

Seminary is not meant to be a place for wimpy Christians learning how to lead wimpy churches.  Seminary must be a place where truth is spoken, prayers are powerful, and hearts and minds are broken open.  But seminary is meant to be like that not to be a place set apart. Seminary is meant to be a place of confrontation, of encounter, of transformation so that you like Mary can have an encounter that makes you into a revolutionary.  You, like Mary, can more fully become a leader, acting and praying the world into a new vision ... a vision where the proud are scattered, the mighty are cast down, the lowly are lifted up and the hungry are filled.  A world where the earth is protected and no human beings are asked to live in the dumping grounds of the ravenous. A world where everyone deserves the right to work and feed their children and live in safety.  A world where life is not hopeless and the die is not already cast before you are born to decide who will be happy and who will just pray to get by.

To be the church is to be about the mission of the church, to be about the work of drawing ALL people to God's self, God's vision, God's calling.  To be the church in 2015 if we are to mean anything means we must put away the fancy and fanciful trappings of wimpy church.

Put away your safe comfortable milquetoast church because the world no longer has time for it. Come and join the revolution so that along with Mary and her passion-driven Son, together we may set the world aright!