After our first day of serious conference, there are several points I want to report.

      First, one American bishop still insists we Americans have "torn" and not merely "strained" the bonds of affection that hold the Anglican Communion together. He is rehashing an old quibble over semantics from our last General Convenion. However, the veteran bishops who have been attending Lambeth for 3 decades unanimously say this Lambeth has the best spirit of any they have ever experienced. Maybe the bonds of affection are not in such bad shape after all. I have found everyone very open and caring, especially the African bishops. Frankly, I find it easier to converse with them than with English Ango-Catholics or Australians. It just feels like we are all God's children following Christ as best we know how in our differing cultural contexts. This does not feel like a family that wants to split up. It feels like a family that wants to be a family.

       Second, the Archbishop spoke yesterday as if the Windsor Process will culminate in the adoption of the Anglican Covenant in May and that will solve our diferneces. It sounded like a done deal. However, a wide array of bishops around the Communion are not at all sure this is a done deal. They have questions. At the other end of the spectrum, I have heard 2 bishops in my Indaba group insist we must get things resolved at this very Conference. I don't quite see what they are getting at since that is clearly not about to happen. We are not voting on issues. We are reflecting and conversing together.

        Third, I hear there are newspaper reports that Gene Robinson, Bishop of N. H., has complained that the American House of Bishops excluded him from our provinicial meeting today. Speaking as one who has been misquoted myself, I am not assuming Gene said any such thing. But whoever said it, it ain't so. We met this afternoon, not to do business, but just check in on our Lambeth experience. No American bishop acted to exclude him. In fact, with Bishop Katharine's express approval, some Amreican bishops tried to arrange for him to be with us, but the Lambeth security people would not give him a pass. Gene himself then said not to make a divisive issue of it. So I suspect someone in the press has misconstrued something he said about that situation.

         We had more good Bible study today and a good Indaba session on what it means to be a bishop. I saw the Rev. Stefanie Shatz, our rector-designate for Trinity, Reno, at a program arranged by her scholar husband, the Rev. Joe Duggan. It waas on Anglicanism in the post-colonial world. Tonight we will have a presentation by author Brian McLaren on evangelism in the post-modern post-colonial world. I think that means: how to we present the gospel to young people in the 21st Century? I am off right now to find out.

                                                                                                                                           BD