89 and counting up, not down.

Yesterday (May 5) was an important day quite independent of the drums and horns in Virginia, at least for those in on the in stuff, the real waz' happening true skinny: you know - the scoop.

Anne Eldredge Harris (also know as "the sainted mother") turned 89. Many will not realized that I too had a mother, and she's still around eating up the inheritance and otherwise defying the odds daily.

Now why is this important to folk reading a blog about the "Anglican Future"? Well here are three reasons, (with computer art by Anne.)



(i) She's a real Anglican: incarnational to the core. We come flesh and blood to the task of being God's beloved. (On the left she is looking at her self in the mirror, incarnating old.)





(ii) She's filled with poetic sensibility. She makes books and computer art that touches the soul. (On the right is an angel, Israfel, on loan from Islam, with a dog, under a weeping cherry tree, on loan from our former back yard.)








Now in a motorized wheelchair she still is able to get in six to eight hours on the computer doing graphics, reading the news, even looking a blogs!






(iii) She gronks Scripture, Tradition and Reason - and as age comes on takes reason more and more seriously as a gift - her own and the world's - and thinks bishops, priests and deacons are nice addendums to the faith community but not at all to be taken as seriously as, say a dog or a crow or a great- grandchild. (Here she is with friends in a small prayer group, the two with her have since died.)



You can view her work HERE.

Anne, the mad artist, makes books: You can see them and buy them HERE.

She has three oddball sons, three wonderful daughters-in-law, three grandchildren and one great grandchild. When you add up the three daughters-in-law, the one woman granddaughter, one granddaughter-in-law and the girl great grandchild she may have overcome the serious derangement that comes from too many males around. It's six to five now. Still, Anne carries Ed (father, now in heaven) with her so maybe it's all evened out.

The thing is, if you put us all in a bag and shook us out we would be all over the map on almost every issue in the world, except for two things: we are a family and Anne is the leaven of loving-kindness, and dare I suggest, a focus of unity.

And you wonder why I think the perfect model for the Anglican Communion is a fellowship of loving kindness (koinonia) and not a church (ekklesia)?