the Meritus of Canterbury Cathedral I just a story about my uh my my first experience of Dean Robert was about uh 21 years ago I I had a group from my Parish in Wisconsin and we we made a pilgrimage to U cathedrals in England and the first one uh we visited was was Canterbury and we were there for a weekend and we were so warmly welcomed by by the dean by others at at the Cathedral as well but especially remember the dean's warm welcome at the beginning of of the Eucharist welcoming our congregation from from monaka Wisconsin and the the kindness and welcome of his his voice and um so jump forward number of years until the pandemic and we were all at home and I think most of us were looking online for for things to connect with in some way and and I ran across this video of um this very man and this this I heard this this kind voice that had welcomed us to Canterbury Cathedral uh so many years before and I and uh I began tuning in to those uh those daily um morning prayer that services that that Dean Robert and Fletcher uh put on and it was a it was many ways a spiritual Lifesaver I I think and I think many feel that as well but we're very fortunate that they are on a journey around the the United States as they they um have been many times but this this is uh a part of a itinerary that they're making now and U it's a wonderful thing because they're bringing in a way that journey to us they're bringing uh Canterbury Cathedral the communion uh Anglican communion um to us so we're we're uh moving out of our uh Zone a bit too and so uh I I welcome Dean Robert and ask him to talk to us some about the communion and surely thank you very much Edgar and thanks to all of you for a generous welcome this morning and and uh yesterday and the day before when we had a chance to to um have conversations with you and begin to get to know Louisville and enjoy is beauty a friend of ours lives here Emma mea um who is the daughter of a former Rector of St Thomas Fifth Avenue whom we knew well then he and his wife now live in Rhode Island but his daughter lives here and wouldn't live anywhere else she's she's really really a Louisville person and so we were in her hands going around the city and she took us right onto the beler uh and we saw the lovely um Bell of Louisville coming along uh in the sunshine yesterday the surprise was that this is like a really good English summer and we thought it would be scolding hot and I I think that that you're you're enjoy enjoying cooler weather uh and we shall probably go home and by then I'm sure it'll be pouring with rain but but uh it will be it will be lovely to have these memories Fletcher as you know is a great cameraman and has taken snapshots of just about everyone and everything and we'll be glad to have a time won't we feter when we can just write things up and say do you remember that across the summer holidays I think we can think of doing that think oh that was in and we'll argue like fury because we keep getting places mixed up as we've been across the year to to many places in the United States but this journey began in Houston at the Cathedral in Houston and we were responding to cross the Atlantic from from an invitation of a church very few of these of St Augustine of Canterbury and it was celebrating a very important anniversary and while we were helping to lead a course for Anglican Episcopal lectures at Yale 55 of them of more than 5 years standing back in July the priest of St Augustine of Canterbury in Oklahoma City came up and said I suppose there's no chance of you coming to our special celebrations in the Church of St Augustine of Canterbury and we gave a good English reply we said perhaps and at that point we actually began to see what the year would do cuz it's no no good crossing the Atlantic and just doing one place so we started this time in Houston Cathedral and then came up from Houston uh through Tyler and came to Oklahoma City to be there with father Joe and his people for the great celebrations and from then on went to Kansas City at the advice of the Rector of St Bartholomew's Park Avenue who used to be the bishop of Kansas Dean wolf and he said don't go back to the side go up the middle so we came up to Kansas City and then to St Louis and then to Louisville and then uh we'll just have one more stop in Peoria and then fly home from Chicago on Monday next week and and start again then so what was suggested this morning because we spoke also about the Anglican communion and Cathedrals at forums yesterday um what was suggested was that first of all we might talk in quick factual terms about the communion now I'm very bad at numbers and while I I generally um I'm I'm not wanting to rely on scripts I thought there's no way I'm going to remember the numbers of the Anglican communion and what we're talking about at the moment is 42 autonomous and independent yet interdependent Pan national and Regional churches in communion with the Sea of Canterbury if you've got that you've done better than I have but I do not know what the difference between a Pan national or Regional uh churches but what I do know is that the essence of it all is that we are in communion with each other we not only respect each other's sacraments but we actually welcome each other there are churches which are reformed churches like the Spanish Episcopal Reformed Church we've recently become Trust feter and I to a a newly opened hostel for pilgrims in Santiago de compostella and this is an Anglican Episcopal pilgrimage um Center where they come it's called Casa anglicana uh and in case one sort of missed the the the the code that it's it's it's for us but it's really for anyone who wants to come and the pilgrims arrive it's 5 minutes walk from the Basilica in an old hotel that we purchased and when we went go home on Monday we'll be in England for about 4 days and then we're doing Duty for 2 weeks as uh priests and carers of the hostel there to welcome pilgrims and to bind up their feet uh and uh let them do their washing there and give them breakfast and supper and they have nice rooms there at a very very reasonable price so all of that becomes uh that's under the care of the Spanish reformed Episcopal Church which is a church which is in total communion with us and there is a wonderful Bishop there who's been Bishop for some long time he's a larger than life character who looks like Mr pck and and has uh lovely Spectacles on the end of his nose and is always full of good cheer and he and his wife have three little dogs what are they Orit teras are they yeah Yorkshire teras and I think they're called um um Candy and sugar and the other one honey that's right and they just follow him around the streets and it's it's um it's a talking point whenever he comes he's got there he goes right across Spain looking after his churches and singing hymns all the way so we'll be glad to see Bishop Carlos again so that's the communion which also has a global Secretariat so that you can tune in and you can you can get all this on Wikipedia and just go into it and see what is the Anglican communion and it explains itself is as as best it can on the way through it's very active in a humanism because the styles of what we used to call in in bad old days churchmanship and we now call ecclesial tradition the styles of ecclesial tradition are different even amongst our own Episcopal Churches so that quite often in London if someone is going around from church to church they'll go into All Saints Margaret Street which is full of incense and bells ringing and and golden statues and that is an Anglican Church they then walk across the road to All Souls langum place which is a much more Protestant Anglican church with its wooden plain wooden Altar and all of that and they say is this the same denomination and you say yes this this actually covers a widespread so that people have a wide variety of choice and they walk around in that way out in the countryside the the thing holds good that you every square inch of England is in a parish and anyone in that Parish the geographical bounds of that Parish has the right to call on the services of the parish priest for help whether they're atheist Muslim whatever it's a geographical location people cross boundaries to go to churches of different types but there is this sense of pastoral care for the nation from the established church it's what mean what being an established church means on that way um safeguarding has become an enormous uh uh an important part of the duty of any faith community because there are ways if someone is in a a position of leadership in a faith community they do have the responsibility for folk and there's an opportunity for it to be used badly with emotional control and so all churches are now advised and they all do to look after the safeguarding aspect and and check that that all of that is is good and then there are four what they call instruments of unity one of them is the the Archbishop of Canterbury who enshrines in his figure the the the um sense of being in communion with the Sea of Canterbury whoever the Archbishop be at the time then there's the primat meeting which happens from time to time that's the lead Archbishop or Bishop in in the case the presiding Bishop here who meet together much more often than the 10year meeting of the lambus conference which is all Bishops across the world and the lambus conference met in July but only briefly it had been postponed from 2018 to 2022 because of not only because the the Archbishop having been in thron wanted to meet all the primates before he could plan a conference and he wanted to ask should it be in Canterbury or somewhere else in the world and they all said can we have it in Canterbury because we have common ground at that point and and Canterbury with the University Housing it knows how to to host an Lambo conference but it then got shorter shorter and so it was really sort of two weekends and the week in between whereas in in 2008 it was three weeks long more or less and people had traveled across the world to be together at that time and spend quite a lot of time together at that time so we can talk about hosting that when we go on to thinking about your hosting of the general convention here and what we found um when we were trying to host a Lamberth conference the Anglican consultative Council which is something that meets quite often and people are elected onto that and so the the policy of the Anglican communion can be kept up to date as it goes through and then now this is this affects us all there is a cycle of prayer Which churches use day by day of the different places in the Anglican communion generally it goes alongside a diois cycle of prayer as well so you're praying for your own churches and then today we are praying for the church in where bwan or something of that sort going through the year in that way um there are many issues that are being explored and you'll see that from the website of the communion like gender justice or theological education uh but essentially we've always been a church which responded to the idea that you are respectful of scripture and that's a really important thing that's what I was trying to say this morning of how scripture relates across the board from from Genesis to Revelation and tradition of the church which has developed over the ages and some people make more of tradition and some people make more of plain scripture and then the third one is reason so if something seems sort of common sensical then the the Anglican Episcopal Church very often says let's just sort of weave that in because Society has really changed and what this piece of scripture is talking about nowadays can be interpreted in this way and I found that right across the communion particularly with translators of the gospels and the scriptures when they're trying to translate something in the southern hemisphere in in terms of a crop or something like that which doesn't exist down there and Jesus is talking about wheat or something and they're mostly on maze or Millet or something then the translators very often Give A Go Go Round it and um I think I was saying at at one stage certainly not here um that I had once in Juba cathedral in the South Sudan had to in the middle of a civil war had to celebrate the Eucharist in the Cathedral Church of All Saints with digestive biscuit and orange juice and um you didn't ask yourself inside is this valid uh of course it was valid anything would would would it wasn't regular but it was valid and I remembered an old friend of mine his name was Victor Pike who'd been um Field Marshal Montgomery's chapain in the desert in at the Battle of alamain and he said on Easter Sunday that year he found himself with the troops celebrating cuz everything had been bombed a bits and and roml was sort of just over the horizon um everything was wrecked his own Caravan where his chaplaincy stores were had gone so he said I I I actually gave them dry bread and and dirty water from from a mug but but it was a Sacrament because the the words as he remembered them because all his books have been destroyed um were there and the troops were wanting on Easter day to celebrate Easter Day in the middle of all of that so there is that that I would put on the sort of reason side of things if you can't do this then do this to remember how you do it regularly but in fact you you can then still feel spiritually that this has happened and if there's no priests there then again Common Sense would say that someone could then be the person who is breaking bread uh but these are emergency things we are people of regular liturgy that's why we're Episcopal anglicans and I think you want to talk in a bit about the the prayer book and things of of that kind because the prayer book is is crucial to us an ordered liturgy but it's versatile and it's become more and more versatile as people have become more and more able to read and understand what's going on and in different nations different um what would you call it emphases in the scriptures when we were in where were we with the Spanish mass was that Houston Cathedral or or I think it was wasn't it yeah yeah afterwards we celebrated twice I preached twice to the regular congregation in the cathedral um at the early Eucharist and the the next one and then they said could you stay on we have a Spanish mass with with Father whoever was there to take it and it and we thought oh gosh we've got to stay on this is one 1:00 at at after having started at 8 um and uh we we then had everything translated it was the best of all wasn't it the music was phenomenal from all these these Spanish guitarists who were standing there so in fact what helped keep energy going with the difference between the various congregations so we'd had beautiful music as we had this morning in an Anglican Episcopal tradition and then we had the music of the the the Hispanic music there which was different again and we grew used to that when we were in Miami Cathedral the same kind of thing happened but that would be Cuban Spanish more than more than ordinary Spanish this is all the stuff of the communion as you go around and we can talk about that but what I'm quite Keen to talk about is what it means to be um hosting something which is coming with different dimensions now the United States feels massive to us you could put England well probably the whole of United Kingdom into Texas and you're you know you're you're you're driving on and on and on and in in this in this in the states we grow used to it now but in England you'd be where you were in no time at all except it's so congested and crowded and it it's difficult to get around in that way um so let's just talk a bit about um the communion and then we'll go on to the the hosting aspect of this shall we let's see how you want to go father Edgar do okay does anyone have a a question particularly about the communion um one of the things I I think about and and this this this ties with us too and you you touched on it was the the the diversity of of of the church and and it's a diversity of of worship um often it's a diversity that is of some theological differences um differences on certain issues and yet it seems to me there's something at the core not not not just in the U not just in the worship or the prayer book but but but something in the core that ties us as as as anglicans in in in a communion that um it's it's hard to put a a finger on it to say but I I've been to churches in other um other parts of the world or I've been to other churches in even in the states that are very Episcopal churches that are very different but some I know I'm in an Anglican church and and yes of course this is this is something you feel in a great way when you go across the world to different places the language difference matters almost less than the fact that the shape of the Liturgy when you go into a communion service if you're worshiping if I think of being in New Zealand and I had a spell helping the arch Archbishop of New Zealand sort out the three strands that they've got in New Zealand that's the Maui Strand and the um Polynesian stand Strand and what they call the par strand that's mostly you you and me the the European Strand and we were trying to get some kind of accommodation but we went to communion in all three sort it didn't matter you saw the shape and if you Worship in in a different language you you sort of know oh no this is the Gloria coming or this is the Sanctus the shape of the worship is the same what you do lose of course is if the scriptures are read and you find that in European countries then you've got to know what it is and it's best to carry your own scriptures with you so that you can just a small gospel book or something in your pocket and then everything is in in order but order is part of of what we do and is as anglicans there are portraits in the Deery in Canterbury of every Dean all the way back to the Reformation and so many of them are holding a prayer book with the finger in the page it's it's shut on their hand but they're holding it like this and it was a sign to Puritans that informal Worship in the terms of everything has to be straight out of their head and heart and anything written down is not real worship it's we are people of an ordered liturgy and as you probably know that during the 11 years of the Republic in England after King Charles I 1 was executed to have a prayer book was a criminal act if you worship from the prayer book that was that was breaking the law of the land and you could be hauled off to jail and until Charles II came back in 1660 that was how it was and at that point the Anglican Church was restored the Church of England was restored so you're sort of saying that there is this order and there's also a sense of being when you go into a place oh this is an Anglican Church an Episcopal Church though we did have an awful lot of Roman Catholics who would come into Canterbury Cathedral with with its altars rising up through up to the high Altar and with incense and and quite often the Eucharist sung in Latin by the choir who would think they were in a Roman Catholic church and saying we were so glad to be here that you know and we actually we non Roman Catholics but this is the Church of England's mother church here and so there is this sense of furring at the edges nicely so that people of a non-conformist type for a long time in a Parish Church of mine in the countryside I had a a church Warden who was a Baptist but there were no Baptist churches around and so he he made common ground with us uh and and eventually he never never left his his native church but we gave him what what what would be called by Vatican 2 ecumenical hospitality and and we have we tend to have open altars to anyone who wanted to come and receive whereas there is a sense it's why we opened the casa anglicana there are some Catholic churches in in the world which will say you cannot receive here um if you are not um a Roman Catholic signed up and sworn in in fact it's breaking the rules of Vatican 2 because the Vatican 2 says if you are someone who believes Christ in the sacrament it's his wider thing as that and treat that with reverence and you're nowhere near a place of your own then you can receive Hospitality ecumenical Hospitality here and we do that all over France and you say to the parish priests you know we we're anglicans but we'd like to of course in fact so so often the French priest say come and join me at the altar and i' say now I can't really dress like this when you come in from the beach and so it's not it's not exactly it's not exactly um uh easy for for folk if there's a really hard line about the thing but the Anglican Episcopal tradition is not a church of hard lines certainly not now in this part of the 21st century so that that's I I I would place it in that that scripture tradition reason with a balance and some they used to do it with sort of high Church low Church broad Church the high Church rested on tradition the low Church rested on scripture and the broad Church rested on common sense but most mostly mostly people were a mixture of of all three and found perfectly good homes in in anywhere they went in that way does that help a bit yes yes that reminds me of my U my Bishop when I was first uh going off to Seminary but he he had a a saying that he would refer to the the broad church as hazy the low church is lazy and the high church is crazy that's right that's I remember um just perhaps a word about um we have our our convention coming we have um a number of things that are are are going happening in the next few weeks uh some have volunteered to be U to to be volunteers during during the convention um May maybe if if you could talk a little bit about how our um our our convention may be similar to Something in in England like the Senate and how that um what what uh sort of things there are in in decision making and and U yeah sure how our sinid is is different from yours because um we are an established church so the CID is the only the general Senate is the only body outside Parliament that can create laws for England and the Senate can still it's all there have to be laws about the life of the church and those laws have to go before Parliament so that Parliament says yes this is according to the law of the land but the established pray book is authorized by the crown as being the worship recognized by the law of the land and that actually can be very formal business you've got lawyers in wigs standing around I don't if the general convention does that kind of thing but but but the the general Senate meets twice at least three times sometimes every year and two of those meetings would be in London in church house Westminster which is uh something which um was built just to house the the church assembly as it was called in those days and once a year in the province of York because England is two provinces there's an Archbishop in York an Archbishop in Canterbury and we have the the the in the Canterbury Library there was always a um a row between Canterbury and York was saying we're we're actually more senior than you can we would say y would say we don't recognize that so so when William the Conqueror came he thought I'm not having this we can't have arguments like this you'll all come and meet here and we still have the document and it's it say it's establishing the Primacy of Canterbury and then underneath is the King's mark because William the Conqueror was illiterate and then underneath too the queen who was not at all illiterate but she didn't want to shame her husband so she puts her Mark uh and then after that comes the um signature of of the Archbishop of Canterbury who at the time was lanf Frank was he I can't I think it was and then all the Bishops of England and all the abbots of England sign and they they say conscripts I have signed this and at the bottom is John Archbishop of York and he doesn't say conscript he says cono I concede and so we treasure that volume it's there some people ask to see the mark of William the Conqueror it's there but we keep it as I a sign of Canter but now all those things become important when any kind of sinnard meets so that if it it's always a summer card in York and we we have gathered at the University of York just outside the city and we would go in for our Eucharist on Sunday morning all of us into yorkminster and in in yorkminster what happens there is that the two archbishops walk side by side with their two Primal crosses and one year the Archbishop of Canterbury will celebrate and the Archbishop of York preaches and vice versa the year after but that's not an international Cate the only thing International we ever have is the Lambeth conference which we can talk a bit about that but the cnid would be more like your general assembly of your your general convention rather and you've got very important work to do with a new primate to be elected as well does that happen as part of the of the work of the of the convention it does so we are praying hard because we we utterly and absolutely love and respect Michael who's been a tremendous friend of ours and has been to Canterbury on some very tricky occasions for him sometimes just after an operation on his head and he came far too early but he wanted to State the Episcopal Church's position amongst the primates when they came so we tucked him into the dinery didn't we and and looked after him there so he didn't have to spend all his time with the others in a in a hostel there which in we have in the precincts and since then he's been a great friend and and has come back on many occasions but there was one occasion when he and I sat on the stage of the the great Cathedral Hall with a full um uh audience in front of us audience is the right word this wasn't a service but we sang hymns which we had learned our theology from and after he published his hymns my grandmother taught me book and so he would say do you know this one and then he'd start singing and I'd say oh yes I know I know that I remember it but and and that was good too but but obviously now someone has big shoes to feel fill what and I'm sure the person is out there but at the moment we're all in full prayer for that appointment um what perhaps we could say and you might Fletcher want to say something as well about this because you were more instrumental with hospitality for the lamouth conference what we did with the Cathedral at that time was to open the the cathedral specifically with resources for Bishops and people who wanted to come in and find a quiet space and in the 2008 conference we'd said um just come in here and I'd said to ran Williams the one thing who was Archbishop at the time the one thing I won't allow is votes to take place in the cathedral which would exclude people because this is ran used always to say the cathedral church of Canterbury is Mother's kitchen particularly for Anglican episcopalians and you can't say to anybody else she's not young your mother She's mine um mother's kitchen is where the family can have its Rouse walk out slam the door and you know um um but the door remains actually open for them to return and in God's economy 200 years 300 years to get reunion again with a dimension and an arm of the Holy Catholic Church is no time at all a thousand years in your sight is but yesterday the psalmist says so all those things you're trying to make people of all kinds feel at home and not awkward when they come in because they're looking for Holy space where they can sit down and think well that was a really bad debate we had up there and I feel really hurt by it and then you come into somewhere like this and open armed and you know it's the these things happen that in any family there are there are sometimes bitter arguments and it might take some time to heal it in the garden congregation we've had quite a few things like that haven't we where people have started worshiping again after being hurt by the church and they've they've been able to put the television on and and find us on the video and then at that point um they've got in touch and sent an email saying how do I begin to worship again or how do I make a connection with my family again and fet is better at this than I am because he sits up late till 2: in the morning waiting till America's awake or Japan's gone to sleep or something in order to to say to folk look just pick up the phone and start talking cuz many people regret the r but later don't know how to make the connection and Cathedrals are there to make connections they belong to everyone so at the same time the dosent in the cathedral the shop people the hospitality of a cathedral cedral is really at a premium if you've got something like a convention nearby because conventions have difficult debates and at the end there's with a vote there's a winner and a loser and if a whole section has been Outcast by a by a particular decision then there's some healing to be done and it might not be able to happen yet good what would you say just a few words about the garden congregation for those that I I know some of us are are familiar but but how how how you began and and where they can find it now sure do you want to come and help with this no right sure don't want to say anything about Hospitality or anything um Garden congregation began on 25th of March in 2020 Feast of the enunciation when the Archbishop had ordered all churches to be locked he couldn't order cathedrals of the old style to be locked because he had no authority over them so it was an option for us to say we will stay open we didn't close for the Black Death we didn't close for Hitler's Blitz we actually stayed open through all of that when people needed to say their prayers and so it there was an option to say right well we won't we'll stay open but I think we felt that to stand beside our brother and sister clergy of um we would actually lock the building and and then it was with a heavy heart really wasn't it that we we did that and and thought it was a bad decision because people had never needed to be in holy spaces more than then you should I think you should say as well that there's a difference between Shing to the congregation and Shing to the clergy yeah and that the instructions as well for the maintenance to still go on that's true yes yes so that a caretaker could go in but the priest was not allowed to go in um and in the book of common prayer 1662 which is still the sort of um foundation stone of our our prayer books and liturgy for all of us um lots of modern things which are authorized yes but that that's the foundation stone in it it says if the parish priest is at home and not hindered by pastoral responsibility of urgency or having to be away that day for a good reason then they must go to church cause the Bell to be rung so that the people know that they are praying and the doors to be open for them to join them and that's a a sort of holy Duty and the priests were locked out of their buildings so I would hear uh uh Father Anthony the Roman Catholic priest in his church ringing the bell for Mass even though lots of people couldn't go to that he and his te team said the mass every day in church and the bell said we are praying for you we are praying for you as the bell rang we weren't allowed to do that so it was at that point that you said on that morning um why don't you take the the morning office into the the Garden open your your prayer book say the office which and we won't be breaking 14400 years of tradition and we also believe very firmly that Canary Cathedral is all the ground within the monastic wall so in the garden we were equally in the cathedral so to speak and he said I will bring a camera were you an expert at that in those days no nothing at all and now this has grown on the way and um maybe two or three of our congregation might be helped that's how it started and then from then on we were be became aware go on we did also say a private Mass every day to keep to keep the CH that's this is a secret information that we so the building was not not unvisited and unblessed as the as the uh the the the H says uh so I think that that that was how it started and what we discovered was was the deepest of Wells of need across the world of that spiritual Dimension that I was trying to sort of open up a bit in the sermon this morning that there is this sense of of something within you which is not just plain thinking and and Mortal sight and and and brains and strengths it's a spiritual Dimension which speaks of the Eternal and which only the heart can recognize and it was that that was crying out for nourishment and it came from far and wide not just Anglican Episcopal by any means not just Christians we had Jews we had Muslims we had Buddhists we had atheists who wanted a rhythm of life and what was helping them was creation going through its Seasons so that as we did it what every day for 26 months without a break they saw two full lurgical years and two full human Seasons with snow on the branches of the trees and this was in in in Sydney looking at from the heat of Sydney at the middle of an English winter and vice versa with with when we were in summertime and Springtime then it was giving this freshness but what was listening was the heart and that that came Al across loud and clear I would say what was needing healing was some in Eternal dimension of which a human being is is is capable and we then had to try to respond but I set the tone as being what would I do if I was going to visit someone in the parish perhaps they're new or perhaps they're ill or whatever and or perhaps these are people I've not yet met so you go through the garden gate and if they were there at the front door You' say your flowers are just wonderful you know and then you go in and then they'd say um um do sit down you know and you might say that's a really pretty picture of your your fireplace and they'd say yes my wife and I bought that we were in and then sadly she passed away 3 years ago and I've come to live here and so you then had a conversation and then you came to the the Blessed sacramental point where they would say to you would you like a cup of tea and at that point the one thing however floating with tea you were from three other visits you if you said no that was a stopper if you said yes then something sacramental happened in receiving Hospitality accepting it and the Rel a ship went on you you all recognize this isn't just a Preserve of a priest it's a Preserve of anyone making a new neighbor and from from then on um there was a new relationship now that's what we tried to do by talking about ordinary things in the garden or occasionally going into the house at Christmas time or something when there were decorations all over the place or or or different times of the year but mostly we were outside in the fresh air which belongs to everybody so it wasn't an Anglican Place it was actually just everybody's fresh air on the planet we've been given as our home and it allowed you to talk about the the the care of the planet and also to ad minister to the kind of needs that were out there looking in and the the result was as you know hundreds of thousands of people just became and they called themselves the garden congregation we never thought of that nor had we intended ever to set up a congregation which said do it this way no need to go to church it was very much do it this way and you'll see the need to go and break bread with a supportive Community which you are physically part of at the moment you can't be but you will be soon so do use this as a way of learning and also a way of helping your your morale but don't think of it as a substitute for church because in no way is it that Christ commanded us to break bread together and that could happen in a multitude of different ways thank you does anyone have a a question or yeah please be brave and anything we might not have talk about what you want to speak about this morning but but uh if there's anything yes please Bill speaking General convention I served twice as a deputy from my former dasis General conventions and on both occasions there were observers from the church of England who were I'd like you to comment I don't know you have nothing to say but they were surprised they said that our worship seems so angli I think actually that that you you have to be in a place to to to realize that and it's it's years since we started coming to the States because there every year in my time as dean of Canterbury we would come across twice for the two meetings of the friends of Canterbury cathedral but even before that we we would we would have known because we had copies of the the Liturgy and it was more or less carbon copy the same and in terms of the way we've developed modern prayers of consecration in fact the the prayer of consecration that that I used this morning which was set before me I'd never used or seen in my life before but it was a lovely thing to be exploring as we went through this Dimension there and and we have these ways of being what should we call it uh um imaginative in the way we use worship and not losing the structure and then you suddenly get this lovely Anthem by Bor Williams which you know really well and you think that's brilliant music always brings you straight home if you if you know it and the words of hymns and things of that sort praise to the holiest in the height which is always amusing to me because um um I've heard um Baptist Churches who who will vilify the Roman Catholic Church singing that hymn and they didn't think oh this was written by cardinal Newman and and because a hym book A hym book is about the most ecumenical book in the world but but no certainly the the uh the sense of being in an Episcopal Anglican church and the glory of that is that it's not just a left over from the British Empire is the fact that the Episcopal Church was sort of abolished when uh America Broke Free when the the colonies broke free but at the same time other people then said but actually we weren't using it because it was part of the the worship of England is we were using it because it fulfilled a spiritual and a human need so we've got to get it back and and so your church is a real um Testament to the fact that the Anglican Episcopal way is a valid strand of the Holy Catholic church and not just a historic leftover from the fact that there were Red Coats here once a long time ago so thank a question do you travel with all your own vestments or do you use the ones church I travel usually with one long white ALB which which uh and and at that point um I say to the the priest there uh if I'm not celebrating I say can you can you lend me a stole and and a white girdle and that's all but but I I then travel with the AR we had a funny thing happen the other day didn't we when I I said to where were we going oh I know it was it was Kansas City and I said to the chap who was receiving us there um I'll be traveling with a white ow and he said oh um that's a bit strange um yes that's that's fine and uh I said and it was he overheard it and he said he thinks you're saying a white owl [Laughter] so we were straight into Harry Potter and I so we now call the AL hedvig anything else well we thank you very much for for being here and spending this time with us it's been an honor for us great thank you very much indeed thank Youk