Background Info:

Grace Episcopal Church, Woodlawn, is a diverse, inclusive, and welcoming parish. The mission of Grace Church is to attend to the spiritual needs of all people by maintaining a strong, eucharistically-centered worship wherein the Gospel is preached powerfully and with theological integrity, and to minister to the multitude of persons in need through outreach ministries.  At Grace Church, all who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ.

Integrity of Alabama serves as a witness of the Episcopal Church to the gay and lesbian community; and, as a witness of the gay and lesbian community to the Episcopal Church.  We are affiliated with national Integrity, Inc., a non-profit organization founded more than twenty-five years ago in rural Georgia by Dr. Louie Crew, as a grassroots voice for the full inclusion of homosexual persons in the Episcopal Church and our equal access to its rites.  However, advocacy is only one facet of our ministry.  In more than sixty chapters in the United States the primary activities are: worship in a supportive environment; emotional support and counseling; spiritual nourishment and Christian education; service to the Church; and outreach.  Through Integrity’s evangelism, thousands of lesbians and gay men, estranged from the Episcopal Church and other denominations, have returned to parish life.

Saint Aelred of Rievaulx (1109-1167) was born in northern Britain into a family which had long been treasurers of the shrine of Cuthbert of Lindisfarne at Durham Cathedral.  At a time when Norman cultural values were displacing more ancient Celtic ways, Aelred was sent for education in upper-class life to the court of King David of Scotland, son of Queen Margaret.  Intimate male friendship was common in the old Celtic culture, and the King’s stepsons Simon and Waldef were Aelred’s models and intimate friends.  After intense disillusion and inner struggle, Aelred went to Yorkshire, where he entered the Cistercian Abbey of Rievaulx in 1133.

Aelred soon became a major figure in English church life.  Sent to Rome on diocesan affairs by Archbishop William of York, he returned by way of Clairvaux.  Here he made a deep impression on Bernard, who encouraged the young monk to write his first work, Mirror of Charity, on Christian perfection.  In 1143, Aelred led the founding of a new Cistercian house at Revesby. 

Four years later he was appointed Abbot of Rievaulx.  During this period, Aelred wrote his best known work, Spiritual Friendship, in which he says “…what is true of charity I surely do not hesitate to grant to friendship, since he that abides in friendship abides in God and God in him.”  Due in part to his reputation as a wise and gentle leader, by the time of his death the abbey had over six hundred monks, including Aelred’s friend and biographer, Walter Daniel.  According to a contemporary account, “He did not treat them with the pedantic imbecility habitual in some silly abbots who, if a monk takes a brother’s hand in his own or says something they do not like, demand his cowl, strip and expel him.”

Friendship, Aelred teaches, is both a gift from God and a creation of human effort.  While love is universal, freely given to all, friendship is a particular love between individuals, of which the example is Jesus and John the Beloved Disciple.  In the spirit of Anselm of Canterbury and Bernard of Clairvaux, Aelred writes:

There are four qualities which characterize a friend: loyalty, right intention, discretion, and patience.  Right intention seeks for nothing other than God and natural good.  Discretion brings understanding of what is done on a friend’s behalf, and ability to know when to correct faults.  Patience enables one to be justly rebuked, or to bear adversity on another’s behalf.  Loyalty guards and protects friendship, in good or bitter times.