This morning I met with some bishops’ wives from Congo. The news was both good and bad.

The good news is that most of the country is now relatively peaceful, apart from some areas in the north. There is a new president, and people are feeling cautiously optimistic.

The bad news is that after so many years of war and unrest, the rebuilding operation is daunting. It isn’t just physical building that needs doing, though roads, hospitals, schools, churches have been destroyed, both by fighting and by the earthquake in February. It is also that people’s trust and social relations need rebuilding, and that could take much longer. Many young people have been involved in the fighting, and bear the scars of that, visible and invisible. Many who have carried weapons for so long are not about to lay them and the way of life they have represented down without a struggle.

Many of the bishops’ wives have seen and heard unspeakable things because they were called on to help people in need. They have seen people executed, and had to try to help their families. They have seen women who have been so repeatedly raped that their bodies would need surgery to have any hope of recovery. Most of them will not get it. As for their minds and hearts …

Bishops’ wives in the Congo are not well off themselves, yet they are trying to help, often whole communities, to basic health and education. They do not have the luxury of opting out of this ministry. The need is too great. All they asked me to do was to pray for them.

ECUMENICAL participants in the conference have told the Archbishop of Canterbury that all the churches are grappling with the same issues. “In the conversations I have had with a wide variety of people among our ecumenical friends, the same message has come through - from a commissioner of the Salvation Army to a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. These are everyone’s issues,” he told a press conference on Friday.

Everyone had problems about authority, scripture, theology and ethics: Anglicans just happened to be “dealing with them in a pretty acute way.” Dr Williams said this had been “helpful and encouraging for some of us to hear.”

Dame Mary Tanner had emphasised the same thing in an introduction to the ecumenical day: The Bishop and Other Churches. “I think our partners are watching us with great interest to see what happens and I think many of our ecumenical partners are looking particularly at the Covenant . Much of what’s in it is of course also in many of our agreed statements with our ecumenical partners.

“I think we have come so far that our ecumenical partners will understand that there is no such thing any longer as a unilateral action. What one church does affects the other; what the other does affects the other churches. So I think there will be a continuing accompaniment in the journey.”

There are eight bishops here from Lutheran churches; eight from Orthodox churches, four from Oriental orthodox, eight Roman Catholic bishops and 18 representatives from non-episcopal churches. They are fully participating in the conference and are in all the indaba groups.

The first of the open hearings with the Windsor Continuation Group happened on Wednesday: part of what Dr Williams described as the “deeper groundswell of work in another areas.” Four out of five of the indaba groups were working as they should, he suggested: “We have begun to grapple with the business... as reflections feed back over the weekend, we shall be looking at a lot of the sensitive issues and all the groups involved are working more intensively.”

He suggested the indaba groups were working “with varying degrees of comfort and success.” One bishop described them privately on Friday as “in rebellion”, wanting to press on to what another bishop called “the elephant in the room.”

Speaking of the London march, the Archbishop said that everybody who had participated had felt part of a “rather remarkable occasion... We were able to say something we hope was clear and straightforward to our government and hear something clear and straightforward in response. People’s reactions to what the Prime Minister said was uniformly very positive and very hopeful. They felt they then had a message to take back to their own governments around the world.”

It’s important to mention that I’m eating another salad out of another box. This is because I have, upon recommendation, just trekked across the campus to the Keynes building and its Italian restaurant, La Dolce Vita, only to be told by an officious member of the university catering team that I can only eat in the Tex-Mex restaurant in Darwin, the building where I am living in my sixties student room.

But what if I don’t like Mexican – or at least, not every night for a fortnight, I plead? She gives me a cold stare and repeats her mantra: you can only eat in Darwin. She flicks a cloth across the counter and I leave. The restaurant, by the way, is almost empty of diners.

I go into this sorry detail because after a week in residence, I hit a new low tonight. I am hearing the worship borne so tantalisingly on the air but I can’t attend it because journalists are not to be trusted near the bishops when they are worshipping. The paths around the Big Top are ringed with security fencing. We are allowed in for selected plenaries but only with an escort and only en masse.

So I cannot do my job and describe for those in the dioceses and parishes the richness of worship there must be when voices from all around the world come together in praise and supplication. I can’t report accurately for our readers - whose Church this is - whether the bishops are doing what they came here to do. I don’t even know who’s here and who isn’t, and I’m not likely to.

Our morning press briefings bristle with tension and frustration. The Church House communications team are brilliant: they go the extra mile for us every time and are taking all the flak for whatever higher authority has decreed that we cannot have a list of the 670 bishops who are said to be present. Lawyers and privacy laws have been mentioned. Today we are told there will be a list, but that bishops can decline to be on it. So our readers worldwide - whose Church this is – cannot know whether their bishop turned up or not.

Of course we can’t go to the Indaba groups where bishops can talk without fear of being quoted. Credit us with some sensitivity: we didn’t expect to. Back to my salad box for a moment. Quite apart from being refused entry at La Dolce Vita, the reason that I am loitering here is that I can’t even get into a fringe meeting tonight.

The Episcopal PR person thought I was joking when I asked to go and hear A Conversation with Gene Robinson, advertised in the programme as ‘Open – all conference participants welcome’. There were palpable jitters when I asked to listen to Canadian and African bishops engaging over community building, which seemed a Very Good Thing to be doing in the circumstances. Sorry, I was told, not unsympathetically. You can’t come. But you can speak to somebody afterwards.

It’s the story of our lives, speaking to somebody afterwards, if they’ll speak to you at all. It’s second-hand reporting. It just won’t do. None of the bishops’ seminar options, the ‘self-select sessions’, are open to us. I look at the range of issues and am desperate to sit at the feet at some of the renowned people from all over the globe who are leading them.

Here is everything that matters, everything the Church should be engaging with. What wouldn’t I give to go to The Deadly Co-epidemic of Tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/AIDS, chaired by the Archbishop of Cape Town? Or The Consequences of Climate Change in Sub-Saharan Africa? I want to know about the Church’s role in peace building and conflict resolution. The mission challenges posed by eastern spiritualities. Christian responsibility in relation to the Holy Land. And the rest.

I want to hear it from the horse’s mouth. I want to see the flashpoints, hear the burning things I hope the bishops want to say from their own contexts. I don’t want someone else to tell me what was said. The conference is heavily in debt and there’s all the more need for us to know it is doing its work. The only result of keeping the media at arm’s length like this will be the headlines that everyone’s expecting and nobody wants.

“Women of Sudan are suffering from many aspects of war. Many, many of them lost their husbands. . . They do whatever work they can: when the time comes for school fees, they sell what they can and pay for their children.

“In any diocese in Sudan, women are the backbone of the Church. They are doing very well in spite of the difficulties they are in. They are very faithful; they always commit themselves to the Lord. Many of them are traumatised and stressed. We have this local grassroots trauma counselling for them; so they are just coping. . .

“We train young girls who are out of school as result of rape, early marriages — she is too young: she cannot manage the house. We train them in tailoring, gender awareness, HIV/AIDS, and adult education. We don’t have to wait for outside people to come and help us. We are just developing ourselves.”

“What happens in our country is not like in Europe. We have more young people in the church than older people. We have 100 youth just in the choir. Half the church is children. We don’t have a hall; so we are under the trees — one service is 2000 people. Can you imagine? The world of the Mothers’ Union is very strong. Because of that, women are now accepted to be priests. We are expecting a bishop to come from that.”

“Our country is very large; our problem is transport. Many of us don’t have cars but we like to move. You can walk three hours to reach another parish. It’s a big problem: women are suffering.”

You don’t grumble, you never complain, I observe. They say: “We complain to God. Nobody can hear, only God. The women are praying. The war is going on, and we are asking God to bring peace. Hostilities are stopping now in Southern Sudan, and we are happy.

“We pray. God will do it.”

We started making our vine today in our spouses’ space. We are studying Jesus’ great ‘I am’ sayings in our Bible studies, and the vine is a visible outworking of our growing understanding of ourselves as interconnected because we are connected through Jesus Christ. Jesus is the vine, we are the branches.

The vine is the brainchild of one of the English bishops’ wives. She has supplied us with very simple instructions and materials for making and decorating vine leaves. We spent part of our session this morning working at our small tables and talking to each other. Each leaf represents some aspect of who we are and what we have left behind in order to come to Lambeth. Throughout our time together, we will be making our leaves and fixing them onto the vine that Linda has constructed.

Some of the leaves that people brought were richly decorated and stitched, some were clumsily stuck and lopsided (that’s mine!); one person quilted hers, because quilting is a traditional craft in her family. Some were embroidered, some had a written message tucked into them. One told the story of seven generations of clergy wives; one was made in the shape of a banana palm, and there are several eucalyptus ‘vine leaves’, too. The men seemed as content and absorbed in the task as the women. Each leaf came with a story to be shared and woven into the vine. It is going to look glorious by the end of our time together.

THE ARRIVAL was low-key. Relaxed bishops sauntering down the cobbled street towards the Cathedral, and official stewards and good-natured police far outnumbering the handful of mild-mannered, almost self-deprecating protesters.

“Woe to you who are at ease with Lambeth — Amos 6.1” was the most penetrable, if not from any recognisable version of the Bible. There was a solo murmur about the fruits of historic disobedience, and some rather unfathomable warnings about unclean birds of revelation having their nests underthe bishops’ garments, and men who didn’t expose deeds of darkness carrying them under their own jackets. But no voices were raised.

In a break with tradition, the bishops did not process, Olympic-style behind their provincial standards; nor did they wear copes and mitres. They walked in pairs, in convocation dress, deliberately “undifferentiated” so as to reflect a desire born out of their three-day retreat to be “less triumphal than some might expect Anglicans to be, or had been in the past,” the Primate of Australia, the Most Revd Phillip Aspinall, explained afterwards. The only group separated out were the Primates.

It was intended to be less formal and more accessible — and also hid gaps in the provincial representation. There was a ripple of interest among the press when the Bishop of Durham appeared wearing his cassock: was it some kind of protest? No, his robes had been mislaid somewhere on the campus of the University of Kent.

Brass and organ thundered out the fanfare and the opening hymn, ‘We sing a love that sets all people free’, to the tune of Woodlands. It heralded an all-encompassing and magnificently cosmopolitan service, with the prayers of penitence in Swahili, African rhythms for a syncopated Gloria, and the Epistle from Romans 8 read by a Korean nun in her own language.

Then came the outbreak of sheer joy that was the Gospel procession of grass-skirted Melanesian Brothers and Sisters. In scenes reminiscent of Dr Sentamu’s enthronement as Archbishop of York, they danced and weaved their exuberant way from the High Altar to the Compass Rose, to the accompaniment of pan pipes, drums, and the kazoo.

The Bishop of Colombo, the Right Revd Duleep de Chickera, was the preacher. Taking as his text, 2 Corinthians 12.9 — ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” — he spoke in a measured and quietly inspirational way of the realities that encompassed the worldwide Anglican Communion. One was the torn and divided world — “God gives the Church an agenda out of the crises of the world,” he suggested — and the Communion must always give the highest priority to transforming it.

He spoke soberly of the second reality. “We are a wounded Communion. Some of us are not here. That is an indication that all is not well,” he said. “Certainly the crisis is complex. It is not a crisis that can be resolved instantly. The journey ahead is a long and arduous one: a journey that will demand our prayers, our faithfulness, our mutual trust in each other and, of course, our trust in God who makes reconciliation possible.”

The Gospel reading had been the parable of the weeds sowed among the wheat. “The words of the master were wise. Let them grow together,” he emphasised, in a clear plea for unity. “There must be no uprooting, my dear brothers and sisters, simply because if we attempt this game, of uprooting the unrighteous, none of us will remain. . . The wisdom of these words suggests that we stay together. We grow from a common strain, a common tradition. . . The disciples of Jesus stay together and journey together.”

The Bishop made a plea for “the practice of self-scrutiny”, illustrated by the parable of the plank and the speck of dust. It was gentle chastisement and admonition. “Christ calls us to be hard on ourselves and Christ calls us to consider him only as our measure and our standard. . . The standard is always Christ. It’s not that bishop who’s giving you trouble. It’s not that archdeacon who whose theology always irritates. . . Self-scrutiny is possible in the Christian journey as we stand naked before Jesus the Christ.”

He spoke of the need to resuscitate Anglicanism, the challenge of unity in diversity, of humility in Christ. The Communion was called to be “an inclusive Communion where there is space equally for everyone and anyone, regardless of colour, gender, ability, sexual orientation. Unity in diversity is a cherished Anglican tradition: a spirituality, if you like, which we must recognise in all humility for the sake of Christ.”

Talk about reconciliation was incomplete unless the Communion was a prophetic voice which addressed and dealt with the injustice of the world, he said. The prophetic voice was the “voice of the voiceless, those who for political reasons, cultural reasons, economic reasons, military reasons cannot speak for themselves”. Whether there was a crisis in Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Afghanistan, or Iraq, “the voiceless must be given a voice through the leadership of the Anglican Communion.”

The prophetic tradition was, in a sense, monotonous and relentless, he reflected. He concluded: “As we move from this wonderful retreat through this beautiful eucharist into our conference, here is the crux of Anglican identity. We do not live for ourselves; and all our energies, all our gifts are directed toward abundant life for others.” Loud applause followed.

Then the Nicene Creed: it caused us to stumble, said as it was in its ancient form, without the phrase, “and the Son”. There was power and might and glory in the Missa Luba, a version of the Latin mass based on Congolese songs; the Lord’s Prayer was spoken in everyone’s own language; intercessions derived from the Scottish eucharist were led from the Compass Rose in Hindi, Portugese, Japanese and French.

They went out to “Oh for a thousand tongues to sing” — never more rousingly sung. The Archbishop of Australia, Dr Philip Aspinall, said it had been “an amazing experience to be in Canterbury Cathedral with all the bishops from around the Anglican world.” Just the acoustics, he said, “not to mention all the saints entombed around the walls. One does have a sense of being surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. It is really quite moving.”

SUNDAY: OUTLINE OF THE CONFERENCE

THIS CONFERENCE will be markedly different in style and approach, and bears the distinct and reconciling stamp of the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is a genuine attempt to address the complaints that have always attached to international Anglican meetings and are most frequently voiced around Primates’ Meetings — that those who are not familiar and confident with the parliamentary way the Church of England does its business are highly disadvantaged.

Dr Williams’s diary has been described by the media spokesman, the Archbishop of Australia, Dr Philip Aspinall, as ”horrendous” and the demands on him “enormous and constantly moving.” Praise and respect for the way he led the bishops’ retreat has been near-universal: one bishop described his reflections as “pure gold.” The bishops are said to have warmed to what he said and to have been drawn together into a more constructive frame of mind, acknowledging that there are deep and difficult issues to address but that they must engage with them.

Dr Aspinall said: “ The Archbishop put to us in the last retreat address on Saturday, that we must go into this conference confident that a way has been found to the Father through the Son via the cross and resurrection. We must be confident that that a way is there, and in this conference together we are seeking to discern where it is and to follow it.”

Everything has been put in place to allow the bishops to speak honestly and easily with each other, in a context of respect, said Dr Aspinall. It would not be for want of trying if they were unable or unwilling to do so. “It is a different way of working, and the bishops will have to be given updates each day to keep track of the flow of it. . . It’s not a debating chamber this time; it’s not a series of motions being presented or votes on set propositions. The chances of avoiding conflict when we get 600+ bishops together are pretty real, and the programme is designed to engage with the conflict in a way that is conducive and productive.” It is all to be “open and transparent processes rather than being put in a back room and voted on”.

Safeguarding the bishops’ integrity has been the first priority: there would, said Dr Aspinall, be “much to-ing and fro-ing , frank expression and robust debate”; but confidentiality in the indaba groups must be respected so that bishops did not feel either inhibited. “If anyone is going to move in their understanding or change their views, the last thing they need is for their view from the conference to be plastered all around the world, because they are then more inclined to need to stick to that view.”

The Archbishop of Cape Town, the Most Revd Thabo Makgoba, comes from Limpopo, home of indaba. A soft-spoken and gentle man with a powerful presence, he described indaba as “a method of engaging, learning, achieving” when there was a realisation of disharmony in a village. “We have acknowledged as a communion that there are concerns and issues around, that are bruising our communion and need more than rushing to quick solutions,” he said.

Mission to the world occupies this first week; interAnglican matters the final week, starting with the Bible and sexuality. Ian Douglas of the Design Group emphasised that there would be no attempt to “dodge the question of how we engage in questions of human sexuality”. And although the indaba groups do not discuss the Anglican Covenant and the continuing processes around the Windsor report until the final couple of days, there are to be opportunities for engagement throughout, in hearings and self-select sessions.

Dr Aspinall expressed himself as “greatly saddened” by the Archbishop of Sydney’s decision not to attend. He described the Evangelical tradition as “a vital and integral part of the life of the Anglican Communion. That will be weaker in this conference because they are not here, and we are all much the poorer for that. It means we will have to find other ways to engage the strength of that constituency.

“I’m sad. They had important things to say that the rest of us needed to hear — equally, I’m sad because I think other bishops have important things to say that they needed to hear. Engagement has been built in in smaller groups so it can be closer and more intensive engagement. Those things have been robbed by their not being here.”

SUNDAY: PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

THE Archbishop of Canterbury called for a facing-up to the Communion’s difficulties when he addressed the bishops in an opening presidential address on Sunday afternoon.

“We must be honest about how deep some of the hurts and difficulties currently go; and we must refresh and reanimate our sense of what our Communion ought to be contributing to the whole ecumenical spectrum of Christian life,” he said. He went on to speak of a vision of Anglicanism whose diversity was “limited not by centralised control but by consent”.

The key words were “council” and “Covenant”, he suggested. Existing bonds of friendship and fellowship were “valuable channels of grace, even if some want to give such bonds more formal and demanding shape”.

Dr Williams warned: “If our efforts at finding coherence for our Communion don’t result in more transforming love for the needy, in greater awareness and compassion for those whose humanity is abused or denied, then this coherence is a hollow, self-serving thing, a matter of living ‘religiously’ rather than ‘biblically’.”

He reminded the Conference: “Our endings are in God’s hands; the Word, through the Spirit, is transforming us into Christlikeness, so that we may pray trustfully and intimately to our Father. And in that process our relations with each other are transformed, and even our relations with the material world around us. At our roots and at our end is the Word, Jesus our Lord, embodying all that God wants to do first for us and then through us.”