Letter: A Mother's Love

June 30, 2008

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori;
Presiding Bishop, Episcopal Church USA
Episcopal Church Center
815 Second Avenue New York, NY 10017


Dear Bishop Jefferts Schori :

I was distressed to read in my newspaper this morning and subsequently on-line of the pronouncements of the Global Anglican Future Conference as embodied in its Jerusalem Declaration. My first thoughts were for my church and her future. My second thoughts were for you, the primate God has chosen to lead us through this difficult time in the history of the church.

The days and times that lay ahead will no doubt be difficult for you. You must wonder at times why you allowed yourself to be nominated and elected to this post. You must look back fondly on simpler days when you had time to pursue your academic interests and later to minister to the needs of ordinary people.

In those low moments, please remember the words of a very wise woman:

“In Death of the Hired Man, Robert Frost said that “home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.” We all ache for a community that will take us in, with all our warts and quirks and petty meannesses – and yet they still celebrate when they see us coming! That vision of homegoing and homecoming that underlies our deepest spiritual yearnings is also the job assignment each one of us gets in baptism – go home, and while you’re at it, help to build a home for everyone else on earth. For none of us can truly find our rest in God until all of our brothers and sisters have also been welcomed home like the prodigal.”

Those words were relevant, right and powerful when you penned them. They remain so today.

We in the Anglican Community are like a family, and like all families we have differences. Sometimes those differences get out of hand. We may stop speaking to one another or say things in the heat of the moment which are cruel or hurtful. But such transgressions do not make us any less a family.

When the family acts up, I think no one suffers more than the mother. No one yearns more for healing and reconciliation.

The position in which you now find yourself is much like that of mother to an embittered family at the moment. As a member of that family, I’m sorry that we so far have failed to bring you all that you might have hoped for in your presiding episcopacy. Surely, more progress in meeting the needs of the least fortunate would have been preferable to the moderating the bickering of purple-clad prelates squabbling openly in every newspaper on every continent. Still, this is the family which God in his ultimate wisdom has entrusted to you. You are our mother for the next few years, and I hope you will continue to find it in your heart to look past our grievous faults and wrongs and offer us a mother’s love and counsel.

Thank you for all you are doing for the Anglican Communion, the Episcopal Church USA, God’s people and for people everywhere. Take heart that the ultimate destiny of the Church and God’s Creation are in his hands, and so are you.

Yours in Christ’s Love,

Scott Cooper
Parish of St. Andrews, Prineville, Oregon