A Wing and a Prayer : A Message of Faith and Hope

Katherine Jefferts Schori was elected Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church at its triennial convention in 2006. She is the first woman to serve as Presiding Bishop of the Church in the USA and the first woman Primate in the worldwide Anglican Communion. In reading her wondrous and inspiring collection of sermon/essays one realizes that her life story is the framework for her message of faith and hope.

She was raised in the Roman Catholic Church until the age of eight when her family moved to the Episcopal Church. She earned a Bachelor of Science in biology from Stanford University in 1974, a Master of Science, and a Ph.D. in oceanography from Oregon State University in 1983. She taught and did research at Oregon State University and was an oceanographer with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Seattle.

In 1991 she entered The Church Divinity School of the Pacific where she earned her Master of Divinity degree. In 1994, she was ordained a priest and served as assistant rector at the Church of the Good Samaritan in Corvallis, Oregon. She speaks Spanish fluently and had responsibility for pastoring the Spanish community. In 2001 she was elected Bishop of Nevada. She is an instrumented-rated pilot. Her husband Richard Schori is a professor of topology at Oregon State University. They have one daughter, Katherine, who is a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force.

In her introduction she writes, "The essays that follow started out as sermons, my own attempt to boldly proclaim the ways I've seen the spirit moving in communities as diverse as those on the coast of Oregon and the deserts of the Southwest and the mountain ranges of the Appalachians. The essays look at my dream for the church and the reckless, abundant love of the God we serve. That's the dream that I bring to the Episcopal Church as I serve as Presiding Bishop."

The book is thematically grouped into, "Nurturing the Body of Christ, The Vision of Peace, Working for Justice and Peace, The Church in the New Millennium, Opening Up to the Vision of God, Living Faith with Abandon, Finding a Personal Path, and Mission and Ministry." Each group contains from three to eight sermon/essays in which she shares her vision of the mission and ministry of the Church.

Schori constantly reminds us that our Baptism is "full initiation" into Christ's Body the Church and that our mission and ministry grow out of this reality. She writes, "The ministry we received at baptism calls us to transform our communities into something that looks more like the reign of God." The focus of her message of faith and hope is from the heart of the mission and ministry of Jesus that the Kingdom of God is "at hand." As members of the Body of Christ, she writes, we are sent to "be and do the reign of God both here and wherever we live and move and have our being." On the social level we are called to seek justice and peace in the political, economic and social orders and on the personal level to seek and serve Christ in all persons by being loving and compassionate to all our fellow human beings. One of her sermon/essays is titled "Doing Is Believing."

In a sermon given at The National Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Washington, D.C. November 5, 2006, the day after her investiture as Presiding Bishop she said, "Let the pain of the world seize you by the throat. Listen for Jesus calling us all out of our tombs of despair and apathy. May the shock of baptismal dying once more set us afire. This place we call home is meant to be a new heaven, a new earth, a holy city, a new Jerusalem. It is the sparks in the stubble that will make it so."