Vicar of Dibley on Youtube

After reading the discussion on Susan Russell's blog, An Inch at a Time about the discussion about women becoming bishops in England, one commenter mentioned the Vicar of Dibley, and specifically the first episode....

I'm not sure how long these videos will stay up on youtube, but while you have a chance, you should check them out. If you're not familiar with this wonderful BBC series, you are in for a treat. In the small British town of "Dibley" there is a new "Vicar" (priest serving a parish, sometimes with the salary paid in part by the bishop) at the local Anglican (what we in the U.S. call Episcopal) Church. To many people's horror, the new vicar is.... a WOMAN! And, what a wonderful person she is,...in many ways! As the English Church is now debating whether there should be female bishops in the church, it is quite interesting to look at the first episode of the Vicar of Dibley (just click below). If you go over to youtube, you can see the remainder of this episode by clicking HERE.

I'm a big fan of the show, and yes, I do know that it is not necessarily an accurate description of the clergy in England, but it is still a great deal of fun!

Check it out,

~ The Rev. Peter M. Carey

Superior Scribbler Award from Kirkepiscatoid: Gracias!!

Kirkepiscatoid was kind enough to award me the "Superior Scribbler" award back in November, and I was pretty lame to not acknoledge it and pass it along to my five nominees. I think she caught me in a "end of term," "getting ready for dozens of Advent services" kind of time, so at long last, Gracias to Kirkepiscatoid!

Many thanks!


The guidelines as to how each ¨Scribbler¨ must, in turn, pass the Award on are as follows:


The Award may be passed on to FIVE deserving Bloggers (my choice).


Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.


Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received the award.


The envelopes please....


The winners are...


Steve, at draught-ing theology, has a great blog in which he reflects on the Sunday lectionary readings, comments deeply and intelligently about the Church, about the Episcopal Church as well as the Emerging Church. Steve is a priest in Alabama who spends time each week doing "draught-ing" theology -- that is -- discussing theology and such things in a local watering hole. Beyond all of these things, Steve is a great priest and a respected leader in our church. I read his blog daily, and feel blessed to call him one of my friends.

Check out his blog!

John, at "Reverend John's Spot," is another wonderful priest in our church who blogs daily (yes, I said DAILY) about the daily readings in the "Daily Office" - the readings of Morning and Evening Prayer from our Book of Common Prayer. John is intelligent, an insightful commenter, and is a deeply spiritual (and fun), person, and all of these qualities come through in his writing. He is a priest in our nation's capitol, and is doing wonderful things. His blog pops up daily for me, and I enjoy it a great deal.

Do check it out!


Caminante, no hay camino, is a blog written by a priest in my home state of Vermont who has recently moved to a new church in the central-Southern part of the state. The priest is extremely well-versed in the goings on of our church as well as of the goings-on in the Anglican Communion. However, these "large" issues do not take the forefront in this blog, more often the writer tends to focus on the way the Spriit is at work in the lives of the people of the parish, and of the everyday struggles and blessings that are our lives.

Do check out this great blog!


The Five Dollars and Some Common Sense, is a blog written by a Ellen Painter Dollar, a wonderful writer who is a mom and a thinker, and a person of great Faith. She reflects on the life of her family, on being a mom, as well as issues of disability. She is a great writer, and has many insightful observations about "everyday" life. As a fellow parent, I really enjoy reading her stuff, and I know that you will too!

Check out her great blog!


Communion in Conflict, is a great blog written by Nathan Humphrey. He is an extremly intelligent priest in the Episcopal Church who is a wonderful theologian and scholar of Anglican Ecclesiology (theology of the "church"). He is wonderfully well-read in the major schools of ecclesiology and has found a pathway between and through these various "camps" and has begun to formulate his own views of an Ecclesiology based in a Communion in Conflict. I read his work with great interest, especially after my own forays into a construction of what I termed a "Dynamic Ecclesiology of Communion." Fr. Humphrey has an important voice in these conversations and I encourage anyone who cares about our Anglican Communion to read his work.

Do check out his blog!

Pray for Gaza...give to ER&D in support!

Photo/Matthew Davies, Episcopal Life Online

from "Episcope" blog...

On January 1, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori received word about the situation in Gaza. Here are portions of the note she received.

The situation here, as you can well understand, is quite difficult and "tense" due to the very sad specter of the tragic ongoing operations - with the consequent heavy loss of life, with the many hundreds injured, maimed and wounded. Our Al Ahli Arab Hospital in the heart of Gaza City is at an overflow capacity - taking care of all those who either come individually or are being brought in for specialized treatment from the Government's Al Shifaa Hospital. Al Ahli had to release those in a "moderate care" status to meet the heavy demand in the inflow of the wounded and injured.

Thanks to U.S. Aid, the first full truckload of U.S. contributed shipments of needed medical and other humanitarian and food supplies crossed over into Gaza. More assistance will be provided by U.S. Aid when the second list of emergency needed supplies is given to them.

The loss of so many innocent lives, children, women and men has stunned all of us with its shocking realities.

In closing, we do pray that this New Year will be a far more peaceful year on this "Fragile Earth, our Island Home."

Contributions to may be made to Episcopal Relief & Development http://www.er-d.org/. Also checks made out to DFMS with "Gaza" in the notation line can be sent the Church Center, 815 Second Ave., NYC, NY 10017.

Archbishop's New Year Message - The Wealth that is our Fellow Human Beings

Archbishop's New Year Message - The Wealth that is our Fellow Human Beings

On Youtube:

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has recorded his 2009 New Year Message to be shown on BBC1 and BBC2 on New Year's Day. In the message, Dr Williams urges us to appreciate the wealth of fellow human beings during this time of financial crisis.






The full transcript of the Archbishop's New Year Message can be found below:


It's always a relief to have a bit of space after the busyness of Christmas to relax at home and mull over the past 12 months and the hopes and possibilities of the year ahead. The prospect of this coming year, though, is one that produces a lot of anxiety and insecurity for countless people. There are fears about disappearing savings, lost jobs, house repossessions and worse. While the headlines are often about the big figures, it's the human cost that makes it real for us.

A little before Christmas I visited a new academy in Scunthorpe named after St Lawrence. Lawrence was a Christian minister in Rome in the days when you could be arrested and executed for being a Christian, nineteen hundred years ago or so.

When he was arrested, he was told to collect all the treasures of the Church to be given up to the courts. He got together all the homeless, the orphans and the hungry that the Church looked after in the city, and presented them to his judges, saying, 'These are the Church's treasures.'

Like any really good school, St Lawrence's treats its children as treasures. In the last few months we've had to think a lot about wealth and security and about where our 'treasure' is.

But it set me thinking - what would our life be like if we really believed that our wealth, our treasure, was our fellow-human beings? Religious faith points to a God who takes most seriously and values most extravagantly the people who often look least productive or successful- as if none of us could really be said to be doing well unless these people were secure.

And as we look around in our own country as well as worldwide, this should trigger some hard questions – whether we think of child soldiers in Africa or street children in Latin America, or of children in our midst here who are damaged by poverty, family instability and abuse, street violence and so much else. Children need to be taken seriously, not just as tomorrow's adults but as fellow-inhabitants of the globe today, growing human beings whom we approach with respect and patience and from whom we ought to learn.

One of the most damning things you could say about any society is that it's failing its children. That's why I was really encouraged recently to be invited to open a project in Springfield in Birmingham – a church-based initiative supporting children and their parents from across the whole community. Here the church community took the brave decision to open up their church building for work with local families and to seek funding for further buildings and resources from the local authority. What's more, they've worked throughout in close collaboration with the local mosque and have a joint programme with them for young people. There's a community with its eye unmistakeably on its real treasure.

So what about a New Year in which we try and ask consistently about our own personal decisions and about public policies, national and international, 'Does this feel like something that looks after our real treasure, something that keeps our real wealth safe – the lives and welfare of the youngest and most vulnerable?'

Jesus said where our treasure is, that's where our hearts will be. Our hearts will be in a very bad way if they're focused only on the state of our finances. They'll be healthy if they are capable of turning outwards, looking at the real treasure that is our fellow human beings. A very happy and blessed New Year to you.

Happy New Year!