All shouting aside, we now have a remarkable reflection from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, entitled "The Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican Today." I am very encouraged to read it, for it gives us a much clearer view of the way forward for the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church. I commend it for your study, for its importance for our future can hardly be overstated. It is a fairly lengthy piece, perhaps best retrieved from the Anglican Communion website at www.anglicancommunion.org. There is also an 18-minute audio file that can be downloaded there, and it is well worth a listen, for the Archbishop has

such a great interpretive voice. This is wonderful material for a Sunday forum or class. Take particular note of his illuminating words on the Anglican identity.

Dr. Williams strongly implies that the General Convention did not make an adequate response to the Windsor Report and that serious consequences must inevitably follow. He describes the Anglican Communion of the future as a covenant community of interdependent churches, where important decisions of faith and order are shared. The Episcopal Church of today is moving in a different direction and will likely have a different relationship with the rest of the Anglican Communion after the Lambeth Conference of 2008.

Many of us, me included, do not see how we could continue to serve in an Episcopal Church that no longer was in full communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. Our own constitution declares that this is an essential mark of our identity.

The 2004 Windsor Report from the Archbishop's Lambeth Commission on Communion is now the point of reference for what it means to be in communion. I am unreservedly a "Windsor" bishop for this reason, and I believe it provides a reasonable and faithful way to maintain the unity of the Anglican family of churches.

I was privileged to join a group of Episcopal bishops who met with the Archbishop last month, and I can say that his words to us were very much the substance of the reflection he has just published. Dr. Williams' hope is that a sufficiently large number of bishops and dioceses can be found to come together and help preserve the Episcopal Church's communion relationships through the days ahead. I know this will require wise, judicious, and patient leadership, and I ask for your prayers.

There have been few surprises here. The recommendations of the Windsor Report, supported by the leadership of the Anglican Communion, were considered by our General Convention. We struggled for many days to formulate a response, and it was only because of the Presiding Bishop's last minute interventions that the most important resolution emerged. All eyes now turn to the Archbishop and, early next year, the meeting of the Anglican Communion primates, for their "careful assessment of the Episcopal Church's response to the Windsor Report." Then will come the decision about who will be invited to the Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops in the summer of 2008, where I believe some momentous decisions will be taken.

All of this is to emphasize that there is indeed an orderly process underway to resolve the conflicts caused by the Episcopal Church's actions, m our diocese especially, many laity and clergy are working hard to help us find a way forward. Of particular note is the substantial and creative work of the Diocesan Task Force on Communion that will be presented throughout the diocese next month. None of these important efforts will be aided by the precipitous actions of groups, congregations, or dioceses: such actions, in fact, have proven to be the root cause of many of Anglicanism's recent difficulties. In the end, if only we are patient, prayerful, and seek to hear that "still small voice" of God in the midst of all the clamor, I know in faith that together we will find a solution that respects conscience, one in which no one is going to be forced to go to a place where they cannot go.

But in the meantime, let us hear well the Archbishop's call for that pastoral balance and solicitude so characteristic of the Anglican way. All of us are included in that call, but especially does it come to me.

Your Bishop in Christ,

+Jeffrey

---The Rt. Rev. Jeffrey N. Steenson is Bishop of the Diocese of the Rio Grande