Episcopal Press and News
Presiding bishop covers the waterfront during visit to Texas
Episcopal News Service. January 18, 2011 [011811-02]
Carol E. Barnwell, Communications Director for the Diocese of Texas
In one of the most touching moments during her visit to the Diocese of Texas Jan. 14-16, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori bent down to get eye to eye with 2-year-old Aniyah Brooks during the blessing of her grandmother's home.
Reina and Melvin Brooks' home was destroyed in Hurricane Ike two and a half years ago and is one of 60 homes rebuilt by volunteers under the supervision of the diocese's relief efforts.
Jefferts Schori and a large group of volunteers, family and friends began the blessing 10 feet above grade, on the front porch of the small white clapboard home under cloudy skies. Newly mudded walls were lit in the fading evening with industrial work lights lying on the just-sanded floors.
Reina Brooks gathered her husband, son Melvin, Jr., and granddaughter for the event. Looking around at the nearly finished work, she said, "We [lived] in one room for so long after the storm and we've been in an apartment for so long, we just want to be home.
"We're not Episcopal, but it didn't matter," Brooks added. "But it was a miracle that all this happened."
The Brooks expect to move back to their home in several weeks just as the relief efforts of the diocese come to a close.
On the first day of her visit, Jefferts Schori celebrated the centennial of St. Andrew's in the Heights Episcopal Church, Houston, noting in her sermon that the area's founder, Oscar Martin Carter, had envisioned a "city on a hill" where people could live together at peace. It is, she said, a place "not so different from other great prophetic images." She commended the people of St. Andrew's for having "given flesh to those dreams" through their ministries and charged them to celebrate their second century with the same kind of "holy work."
St. Andrew's rector, the Rev. Barbara Lewis, called the presiding bishop's visit "a gift."
"It meant a great deal to have the presiding bishop and our bishop at the celebration of our centennial," Lewis said, adding, "Bishop Jefferts Schori has a wonderful spiritual presence about her and her message about the breadth of the Episcopal Church beyond the United States was a great reminder of our connection to so many Episcopalians in this country and 14 others."
Before heading to Galveston on Saturday, the presiding bishop met with 14 of the diocese's 17 college missioners and the diocesan program staff to discuss their work and to hear what the presiding bishop saw as emerging trends across the church.
"We have had an engaging conversation with the college missioners about how a new generation of faithful young adults is changing us in creative and transformational ways," said Bishop Andy Doyle of Texas. "Serving others, being present for others is at the heart of our work and our missioners were thrilled to be in conversation with the presiding bishop about their vital ministries."
St. Augustine of Hippo, the oldest Episcopal African American church in Texas, was founded in Galveston more than 125 years ago when West Indian sailors asked Bishop Alexander Gregg to help them find a place to worship. Although they had access at a nearby Episcopal church during the week, they were denied permission to attend on Sundays. Gregg answered their challenge, Jefferts Schori told an animated congregation on Sunday, just before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
"We are their heirs," she said, adding, "the servant whose birth we mark this weekend began his labors on behalf of the descendants of slaves in this nation, in the same cause of justice that produced St. Augustine."
She noted the congregation's outreach ministries: feeding the volunteers who came to help rebuild Galveston after Hurricane Ike, the community garden (which she later blessed), the healing ministry of St. Vincent's House founded by St. Augustine's 50 years ago to serve the poor of Galveston, "feeding those who are hungry in body as well as soul."
Noting St. Augustine's art show and art lessons were an especially important, she said, "The urge to create something beautiful or expressive reflects a desire to share in the divine, the transcendent, the holy [which] leads us beyond ourselves." This act of "co-creation" gives people dignity and fosters reconciliation, she said.
In her sermons to both congregations, the presiding bishop spoke of the struggles of the Church in Haiti, weaving their missions together, and urging the Houston and Galveston congregations to participate in the campaign to help rebuild the cathedral complex in Port au Prince, while she encouraged both to continue their extensive ministry within each community.