Monday, February 17, 2014

You are the wolves of the park, the (good) pests of the world

It struck me, watching the video below of one small change effecting a whole ecosystem, that the wolves of Yellowstone National Park are a parable of discipleship, a version of 'you are the salt of the earth' and 'you are the light of the world.'



That is something to remember as Anglican gas flares up again over You Know What. Peter Ould catches one or two of the flares here. With another perspective on the recent C of E moves at Titus One Nine. Can the C of E hold together? Will fudge do the trick or should some other glue be found? You might, or might not have an idea of answers to the questions after reading Thinking Anglicans' round up of responses here. (Another comment worth reading is at Liturgy - but please discuss its contents there and not here).

Such thoughts, movements and machinations are not a million miles from my church in these islands Down Under. Daily we get closer to our General Synod in May. Meetings are happening here and there. Bishop Richard of Nelson writes in his latest Ad Clerum,

"Sexuality
Next week [beginning Monday 17 February] I have to attend two meetings around this topic – one is with a small working group which the Archbishop has asked that I attend to ensure the orthodox voice is heard. That is followed, two days later by a meeting with all the Bishops.
Again please pray. ...."

[Editorial note: I am not going to accept comments which attempt to discuss this indicative note per se. +Richard is writing a circular letter not a blogpost! I am citing simply to observe that bit by bit conversation in our church is happening at various levels of 'office', though officially few of us are aware of this fact].

In my next post I would like to take a bit of an overview of where things might head ...

Meanwhile, believe it or not, these distracting discussions do not remit us of our obligation as disciples to be the wolves of the park and the good pests of the world.

4 comments:

Andrei said...

Very slick that wolf video may be but it is slick sophistry.

Assuming the observation that streams and rivers in Yellowstone park is in fact correct and for the reasons given ie the regeneration of vegetation along their banks we could work backwards from there using another chain of reasoning to another equally plausible starting point not involving wolves.

Such systems are highly complex and we view them with our own blinkered vision which means we see what we want to see and are blinded to that which we might not want to see or actually incapable of seeing

MichaelA said...

Interesting factoid: the mother wolf will regurgitate undigested meat from her stomach for her cubs to eat.

Yum!

Peter Carrell said...

Hi Ron
I am not publishing your comment because it specifically contravenes the following editorial note within the post:

"I am not going to accept comments which attempt to discuss this indicative note per se. +Richard is writing a circular letter not a blogpost!"

I quite understand the objection you raise to one word within the indicative note, but the cited comment was made to indicate there are important meetings happening; not to engage in a discussion about how another person communicates within the life of our church.

Father Ron Smith said...

Thank you, Peter, for not allowing my discussion of the 'non-event' you put forward as a not-able-to-be-discussed non-happening on your post here. I note also that, in your next post, which is quite voluminous in its subsequent outfall, you say you do not have the time to do what you then proceeded to do - quite fully!

However, it's your blog, and you are free to publish stuff that begs protest - without accepting such protests as may come up.
Happy blogging; er..musing!