Cross-posted at The Living Church

The Rt. Rev. Barbara C. Harris has offered advice to her longtime friend, the Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool, as Glasspool prepared for her May 15 consecration as a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles.

“If you ever get impressed by your own importance and your elevated status, put on your miter and stand in front of the mirror for a few minutes. You will get a whole new picture of yourself, and it ain’t that pretty,” Harris said during the rector’s forum May 9 at All Saints’ Church, Pasadena, Calif.

“I also told her that there will be days when things are going well and she will feel that she has everything under control, and she will be tempted to paraphrase Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady and say, ‘I’ve got it, I’ve got it, by Jove, I think I’ve got it,’” Harris said. “But I said there will be other days, more numerous, when you feel like you are trying to put pantyhose on an octopus.”

The bishop said she offered her advice when the Diocese of Maryland sponsored a farewell celebration of Glasspool’s ministry. The bishop’s remarks are part of a 43-minute video on the parish’s website.

In offering parting words to bishop-elect Glasspool, Harris said, she quoted what a Pentecostal minister said to her many years ago: “The power behind you is greater than the task ahead of you.”

“I say that to every ordinand with whom I have an opportunity to speak,” she said.

Harris laughed frequently during the video as she reflected on more than 30 years of ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church.

The Rev. Ed Bacon, All Saints’ rector, recalled that Harris was urged to wear a bulletproof vest when she was consecrated in February 1989.

“I refused it. It was heavy,” she said. “I thought, ‘If I fall over, I’ll never get up.’ And I also said, ‘If some fool wants to shoot me, what better place to die than at an altar?’”

Harris prompted vigorous laughter when describing her effort to teach a dance, the Electric Slide, to the brothers of the Society of St. John the Evangelist.

“I spend Thanksgiving day and Easter day with the Brothers of SSJE,” she said. “One Thanksgiving I took them all down in the crypt of their monastery and tried to teach them the Electric Slide. Those guys have a natural lack of rhythm.”

She paid tribute to the Rt. Rev. Thomas M. Shaw III, who became Bishop of Massachusetts in 1995.

“He’s very single-minded,” she said. “He announced as I was retiring that he was going to raise money and build a camp and conference center and name it for me. I thought, ‘That’s a nice thought, but it’ll never happen.’ The next thing I knew, he had raised $19 million and built a first-rate camp and conference center on a pristine, mile-long lake. … I said, ‘It’s very dangerous to name something for somebody while they’re still living, because you never know.’ So now he has ensured one thing: I will try to behave myself for the rest of my life.”
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