A colleague of mine, Jeremy Cooperstock, has a rigorous email policy: once a day, and that's it. His emails always include a link to this policy so that folks know where they stand. That's polite (Canadian, eh?). But why have such an explicit policy?
There's an implicit, cultural expectation of immediacy with email: it can be sent and received at near light speed; a response should be just as rapid, so the logic seems to go. If one does not abide by these expectations, an explanation needs to be proffered. Hence an email policy. Based on Jeremy's example, i offer this note as a first draft of an evolving policy.
I'm pulling back from email. It's getting to be too much. Maybe you see this too: email, combined with a laptop and wireless, seems to have become the great distractor: i sit in talks and conferences and watch my colleagues and myself "multitask" - doing email while the speaker attempts to be more engaging than the current virtual exchange. There's nothing inherently wrong with these capacities, but i'm noticing that there does seem to be something problematic with my own practice of them: too much response mode to email rather than to the bigger picture.
So, over the next month at least, i'll be limiting my email reading to one or two set periods in the day, during the week, and likely zero on the weekend. As a result, replies to emails will likely be more like within a day or so, rather than an hour or so.
The reason for setting these limits is to reclaim my day from the reactiveness that is email. I find myself in open response mode - Pavlov's dogs come to mind: the email chimes and i respond. This can't be right.
Indeed, i know from experience that pulling away from email can be a positive, effective thing. My laptop keeled over last year, and had to go to warranty repair land. I remember the look of sympathy and horror that came over my colleagues' faces when i told them my laptop was in the shop - sympathy that this must be a terrible experience; horror at the thought of how awful that would be if it happened to them. I took the time as an opportunity to see what life without constant access to email would be like.
For what ended up being six weeks last year, i reclaimed my space from email and my world became a more relaxed, more effective place. Rather than have email on all the time while at work, i had it on twice a day only. I did other tasks the rest of the time. Things got done; things got finished; i went home at the end of the day and was home, not online. It felt great. Liberating.
And then i got my laptop back, and my resolve began to slide.
I've hung onto not doing email at night: that's family time, not work time. But now i find myself back to checking email first thing in the morning (and throughout the day) - with the idea that i will understand the shape of the day to come if i understand what emails i need to address. This is ridiculous, no? Email in my life is more often than not small things: confirming this thing; forwarding that file; setting up that date. These are not unimportant; indeed, they can be critical building blocks for projects. But here, too, i note that when they get to urgent mode of requiring several iterations back and forth in a day, or in an afternoon, or within the hour, that more often than not it's because i've let them slide, build up, so that they go from a reasonable thing that could have been dealt with calmly in advance to something that must be addressed "right now!" oh no! - i must be online to deal with this now now now - now how did that happen?
To gage days this way is too reminiscent of Prufrock's coffee spoons. It suggests that the big picture may be slipping out of focus, behind a flurry of to do's.
"So what is the big picture?" i ask myself. What are the big things, the mission level things, i want to accomplish? What are the big pieces that support that picture? and what are the things which need doing to support those pieces? Those things first.
In the 7 habits of Highly Effective People, in the section called Habit 3, First things First, Stephen R. Covey writes " 'The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.'
Where does email fit into that? When does email fit into that?
Over the next month, i'm hoping to rediscover this.
The Royal sort-of-Wedding (it was to be Friday, but they decided they'd rather conflict with the start of the racing season than with the Pope's funeral) has been confusing for those not steeped in Anglican tradition. Charles and Camilla can't have a church wedding because both are divorced - in particular, divorced, and Camilla's ex is still alive.
Henry VIII founded the church of England because he was not given a divorce from his first wife, right?. So one would be forgiven for thinking that the church of England was in large part created to support divorce.
Turns out that's not the case.
There is a public perception, especially in the United States, that Henry VIII created the Anglican church in anger over the Pope's refusal to grant his divorce, but the historical record indicates that Henry spent most of his reign challenging the authority of Rome, and that the divorce issue was just one of a series of acts that collectively split the English church from the Roman church in much the same way that the Orthodox church had split off five hundred years before. (The Anglican Domain: Church History)
It seems from more recent reports that the partner still has to die before the other can remary. So even though Charles's first wife is dead, he can't be married in the church because he divorced Diana.
In the case where one or both parties has been divorced and has a surviving former spouse the legal right to a wedding in a church does not apply.
The final decision as to whether to conduct such a wedding lies solely with the parish priest of the church involved. Some will not do so under any circumstances, while others are prepared to do so, often after referring to the Church in Wales' Guidelines on the matter. Many clergy who will conduct such weddings would not do so for parties who have been married more than once before, or in cases where one party was instrumental in the break-up of the previous marriage of the other party. If a priest agrees to a wedding of a person who has been divorced, he or she has the right to inspect the decree absolute before proceeding.
As ever, before making any assumptions on the matter the parish clergy should be consulted.
From Weddings in the Church
In retrospect this does make historical sense: if the church of england supported divorce, why would Henry have had to have most of his wives condemned to death first as traitors (one wasn't executed; the other outlived him)? The quote doesn't explain the theology of the position, but it does suggest that there's a certain flexibility in whether or not that wedding can be held in a church. That flexibility hasn't been noted with respect to Charles and Camila's wedding. And indeed, some have argued that anything BUT a church wedding is out of the question - or at least not legal - for the heir to the throne. And since the archbishop won't marry him in the church, is the wedding "legal"? The UK govn't says it is. Legal, according to the same govn't/attorney general who said the war in Iraq is legal, too.
In two articles, Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Terry Eagleton: The Pope has blood on his hands, and the follow up obituary of John Paul II by Peter and Margaret Hebblethwaite, and Peter Stanford, we are presented with an effective portrait not only of John Paul II, but of the Church hierarchy which appointed him.
In Eagleton's piece, JPII's background is contextualized with why he would have been picked to be pope: why his background was appropriate and for whose agenda in the church. Eagleton is a literary theorist of the Derridian cast, for whom the question "nothing is innocent; in whose interest is it" is toujours deja a founding question. Eagleton looks at the Pope's appointment as part of the conservative mission of a considerable part of the Church: to redress the liberalism of Paul VI and John Paul I.
The Habblethwaite/Stanford obituary takes a somewhat more even hand to the Pope's extremes, praising his outspokenness for social justice and the poor, while listing in compelling fashion the number of theologians he condemned (one to the point of excommunication) whom he regarded as at best, uncatholic.
Putting both articles together creates a compelling contrast to the current only positive spin on the pope.
The peons to the pope seem strongly similar to the uncritical accolades received by Reagan at his funeral last summer. Eagleton's piece constructs an historically situated rationale for JPII's elevation, and conservative training, (demonstrated, for example, in his canonization of Opus Dei's founder).
Eagleton draws particular attention to the role of the church's anti-condom position in the spread of Aids in africa, where the church effect is strong (it runs many hospitals). Eagleton is not alone in this critique: an American campaign two years ago also pointed to American bishops' complicity in this health crisis. Eagleton goes on to point to places from ecumenism to women where this pope and his hand-picked college of cardinals have pulled away from Vatican II.
Further context is JPII's efforts to pull the plug on liberation theology. He also famously agreed with the condemnation of homosexuality and gay marriage as "evil", and his writings see women in the Marian tradition of genetic role to reproduce, rather than capacity to serve as priest. Since the elevation of JPII, papal direction has only pulled women further away from the altar - a directive that many parishes have been content to ignore.
Some groups are already calling for the deceased pope's canonization, or at least deisgnation as "Great."
But Eagleton's pieces raise the question: is centrist, conservative, regressive, pigheadedness something for which one is to be considered a saint? Or as the Habblethwaite/Stanford obituary puts it:
If his pontificate is to be deemed a failure, it was a very Polish failure, on a vast, magnificent, heroic scale, conducted with zest and panache, comparable to those mythical Polish cavalrymen charging the German tanks in 1939. One admires the dash of it, while wondering whether it was quite the best thing to do.