Bishop V. Gene Robinson, the openly gay bishop at the center of the controversy in the Episcopal Church over homosexuality and the Bible, preached in Boston on Sunday. Michael Paulson says the bishop threw away his prepared text and spoke extemporaneously.

This passage particularly caught my eye. Robinson is talking about his only meeting with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion.

“…the only communication that he has ever given to me, he was lecturing me on how we should have done all this in the American church, and how, before electing me, the amount we should have studied, and written, and theologized, and made canons, and rules, and so on and so forth, before we ever took this action, which was so disruptive to the Communion.

And I said to him, ‘Your Grace, with all due respect, do you really think that’s the way we have ever moved forward? It seems to me that somehow, by God’s grace, we fall into doing the right thing, and then, and only then, do we think our way to it.’

And I said, ‘You know, in 1974 the 11 women who were irregularly ordained in Philadelphia, they weren’t following the rules, they were breaking the rules. But it turned out to be the right thing, and two years later we began regularly ordaining women in this church.’

And I said, ‘Had they not done that, how long do you think it would have taken this church to get around to it? Would we still have an all-male priesthood?’ It seems to me that, by God’s grace, we sometimes do the right thing and then think our way to it.”