It is late Sunday evening here as I reflect on the past week. Most days are too jam packed for much reflecting, not to mention writing. But today, after worship at Canterbury Cathedral, I spent a little time in the city then came back to my dorm room to have some alone time and write.The major events of the past week fit in thee categories: learning, connecting, and formation.

      Learning has to do with takng in new information and ideas about such a wide array of subjects as church growth, Millenium Development Goals, green house gas emissions, cliimate change, and Scripture. There is no way to summarize all that I am learning, but it will inform how I go about being your bishop for years to come. Still, I think this is the least important part of my being here.

        Connecting is more important. Each parish in Nevada is part of a larger whole. Ultimately we are all part of God's creation. We are all part of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church which is the Spirit-filled and Eucharistically-constituted Body of Christ. And we are part of our Diocese and our Episcopal Church USA which shares historic ties with 37 other churches in the Anglican Communion. Those connections challenge and sustain us, draw our concern and compassion into wider circles. I have deepened relationships here with the American and Canadian bishops and formed new relationships with others from around the world. I hope that our people in Nevada can become more intimately connected with some of our fellow Christians around the world.

       The Anglican Communion is clearly strained by cultural shifts in our time. If we manage to stay in relationship those strains will continue. There are two ways we can work to heal these divisions. One is to pray for each other using the Anglican Cycle of Prayer in our Intercessions each Sunday. I encourage all our parishes to consider this prayer practice. The second is by forming Companion Diocese Relationships. LA has five companion dioceses. I don't think we can handle that many. But we can handle some. It will be for others to decide where they might be. I hope it will be somewhere our members could actually visit and where the people of that diocese might visit us so we could be real friends. It is not enough to write checks. The bishops I have talked with are looking for a partner, not a sugar daddy. I have definitely met some bishops whose dioceses we might want to seriously consider getting to know better -- places a youth group might visit, places we might learn from as well as support.

         Formation as a bishop is more than learning new information. It is a shaping of identity. That is happening for me here in many ways -- but one way really stands out. As bishop, my primary duty is to hold our diocsese together in unity. My first article in this series rather piously expounded the value of stayiing together. But that's easy for me to say. The real conflicts are there in the trenches of church life. The hurts, the affronts, the power struggles are the wounds of relationship borne by lay people in the pews. It is too easy for the bishop to say "Stay together. It's a growth opportunity." But here we bishops are struggling ourselves to be church. There are plots and ploys, and personalities aplenty. I have not been the target of anything personally, but there have been some social snubs in the cool British fashion (dissing as American young people said in the 90's) aimed at some of our leaders. There have been the direct frontal assaults and the mixed messages. There is the anxiety of knowing some of our unprincipled adversaries are once again up to some sort of secret chicanery for the final days of the Conference. In the midst of all that, there are good Christian souls aplenty and there is a mission to live for.

       This struggle of the bishops to be church -- to do it ourselves, not just pontificate about it -- is humbling. It is challenging. When last I urged you individuals in a parish to stick together, when last I urged the parishes to speak about each other in a spirit of Christian encouragement instead of competition or backbiting -- I really had no right, no moral standing to preach. It had been too long since I had been through that sort of struggle. But I am doing it here. I still believe this is what we must do. But I now know it is easier said than done. Hopefully, knowing that, I will be better at helping us stay in relationship when it's hard.