Photo of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, courtesy of Episcopal News Service

I got that question a lot this summer from friends and family who aren’t Episcopalians and who are bemused by the stuff they read about my church in the national press.  So here is my brief, idiosyncratic, and much too general take on “what’s happening.”

Every three years the Episcopal Church gathers for General Convention.  General Convention is our governing body; we don’t have an archbishop or pope who decides things for us, but instead work in a complicated, messy, democratic way to get the business of the church done, and even to decide what our business really is.  Our bicameral legislative body is noticeably similar in structure to the U.S. Congress, which is no surprise because it developed alongside it, under the guidance of some of the same “founding fathers.”  It’s big, though, with over 800 people (lay and…

AIDS ribbon at the White House in 2007. Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Do you remember the first time you learned about the disease we now call AIDS? I was barely a teenager at the time, but I remember it well. And I remember, too, the moment years later when I learned that a member of my own family had died from the disease. Today, on World AIDS Day, I remember that I am not alone in that loss.

Looking at the timeline on the Gay Men’s Health Crisis website, I found myself moved by their very brief postings and pictures depicting key moments in the chronicle of this disease over the last 27 years. Certain names contain such resonance that merely intoning them calls to mind a kind of abbreviated cultural history of AIDS in this country: Rock Hudson, C. Everett Koop, Jesse Helms, Magic Johnson, Ryan White. They remind me of…