So now I am in Saratoga Springs NY at the Organ Historical Society annual convention. We've been driving around upper NY state and southern VT in pouring rain, visiting churches which have historic organs and hearing short "demonstrations" of the organs.
Meanwhile, I've been talking with people at Pride about GC and hearing from colleagues and others who feel betrayed and wounded (as is completely understandable) by B033. I have been reading online all the various conspiracy theories -- that the HOB placed undue pressure on the deputies, that the deputies were misled about the level of support in the HOB for B033, that somehow the whole convention, including the PB election was manipulated by people on the fringes, left or right. I've read or heard various expressions of the view that B033 was a wasted effort because the right had already decided to leave TEC before they ever came to convention and that nothing we did has kept Fort Worth, Pittsburgh, SC, etc. from seeking alternative primatial oversight and condemning TEC for failing to respond adequately to the Windsor Report. Meanwhile, I am reading about the Archbishop of Canterbury's reported comments, which suggest that voting for language against my conscience may not have made much difference to him either. Would I vote the same way if I had it to do again? I am not sure. The day I would like to replay is Tuesday, on which we had a chance to bring more acceptable wording to the floor and failed, outmanoeuvered by people who are better at Roberts Rules and the HOD rules than I ever thought about being...
I still believe that there is nothing that God can't make something of, however, that we did the best we could do and we can't right now predict or control how others will feel about it nor how it will all play out in the life and future of TEC and the Anglican Communion.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Scenes from GC 2006
These are a couple of pictures of the MO deputation, taken when our bishop and resigned bishop were on the floor before the PB election. Below is a picture of the UTO box, thanks to Reynolds Whelan. At some point, someone in our deputation suggested that instead of using the UTO box in the usual way, putting in an offering every time we were thankful for something, we should use it as a kind of curse jar. Every time we were tempted to say something mean about the Elections Secretary (who in other contexts we know to be a delightful and competent person) and the voting process and the people who get up to the microphone to say things that don't need saying or, even worse, to say, "I think I can save the house some time if we just..". The box got pretty full most days -- and fuller still when we did indeed give thanks for the election of Katharine Jefferts Schori as our new PB.
Finally, just in case you might not have realized it, here is a photo of GC as a room amazingly full of all sorts and conditions of people.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
The hardest day, Wednesday June 21
During the listening sessions and in other conversations leading up to GC 2006, I found myself saying that I had no idea how I would be voting because I had no idea what resolutions would ultimately come to the floor to be voted on. If you had told me in May of early June that I would find myself voting for B033, I would not have believed it. Here is my version of how and why it happened, which I hope makes clear some of the General Convention experience. I make no claim to speak for other Missouri deputies in this narrative.
Before a resolution comes to the floor of convention, it has been worked on by a committee, which has held public hearings as part of its process. Usually there are other vetting stages, for example each resolution is copy edited and checked for canonical issues. And then Dispatch of Business figures out how and when it will come to the floor. There are 22 legislative committees, all of which have the same process, so there is a ton of legislation coming to the floor. In addition, of course, each resolution has to pass in both the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops in the same form. This year’s convention had 9 business days – previous conventions have had two or three more. Committee 26, the Special Committee charged with the Windsor Report response resolutions, had the resolutions which came out of the Special Commission appointed by the Presiding Bishop and President of the House of Deputies plus various resolutions which came from dioceses, bishops and individual deputies. The hope was that they would have presented resolutions for both houses to vote on before the PB election, but that did not take place. They worked and worked and worked and held hearings including a giant hearing with at least 1,500 people. Strong opinions across a spectrum of belief were expressed on the authority of scripture, sexual orientation and behavior, the relationship of the Episcopal Church to the wider Anglican Communion, the meaning and propriety of expressing regret or repentance and so on. If you have strong feelings about this matter, you probably can pretty much guess for yourself what the speeches were like.
And although both houses had passed easier resolutions: regret for straining the bonds of affection with the Anglican communion, commitment to work towards an Anglican covenant, commitment to a listening process, willingness to have DEPO and, of course, money for the Anglican Consultative Council in our budget and commitment to the Millenium Development Goals, it was not until Tuesday that we got a resolution responding to the Windsor Report for a Moratorium. It arrived, and its language was pretty unacceptable to most of the house.
A161 (Anglican Communion: Election of Bishops)
Resolved, the House of Bishops concurring, that the 75th General Convention of the Episcopal Church regrets the extent to which we have, by action and inaction, contributed to strains on communion and caused deep offense to many faithful Anglican Christians as we consented to the consecration of a bishop living openly in a same-gender union. Accordingly, we are obliged to urge nominating committees, electing conventions, Standing Committees, and bishops with jurisdiction to exercise very considerable caution refrain from the nomination, election, consent to, and consecration of bishops whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion; and be it further
Resolved that this General Convention not proceed to develop or authorize Rites for the Blessing of same-sex unions at this time, thereby concurring with the Windsor Report in its exhortation to bishops of the Anglican Communion to honor the Primates’ Pastoral Letter of May 2003; and be it further
Resolved that this General Convention affirm the need to maintain a breadth of responses to situations of pastoral care for gay and lesbian Christians in this Church.
Resolved that this General Convention apologize to those gay and lesbian Episcopalians and their supporters hurt by these decisions.
It seemed too negative and too extreme. The apology at the end appeared gratuitous and unhelpful. For many people, at least for me, the “exercise considerable caution” language would have been much more acceptable. Meanwhile, someone rose to limit the time of debate on the motion and someone else rose to offer an amendment which used the even harsher language of “moratorium”. By the time the house had debated the amendment, there was no time left for a more moderate amendment. We voted the original down. I certainly was not savvy enough to know that in voting against it, I was assuring that there could be no more debate of this matter. There was an effort to reconsider, which I supported, but it did not prevail. This would have meant that the Episcopal Church was refusing to offer any response to the Anglican Communion on the matter of gay bishops, it would mean, as I understood it, just ignoring those in the Communion who had objected in 2003. Then the PB called the combined session, our bishop made it clear that this was our last chance as a house to respond to the WR, which I took to mean, our last chance to remain in the conversation with the Anglican Communion. More than that, our new PB elect, for whom I have huge admiration, asked us to vote for the language of B033, language which I would not otherwise have supported. Also, many respected members of the HOD, including GLBT people and allies said that they would be voting for B033 even though they did not want to. This was more or less what Bp Katharine Jefferts Schori said, assuring the house that this language did not close the door to anyone.
So I voted for B033, even though it went beyond my comfort to appease the larger communion, even though I knew it would be very hurtful to many LGBT people. There was much language at convention about sacrifice, how we in North America must sacrifice for the good of the whole communion. I agreed, however, with Ruth Meyers when she passionately observed that no one can make that sacrifice on behalf of others, straight people cannot ask that sacrifice of gay and lesbian sisters and brothers. But I also believe that as the Anglican Communion unravels, B033 allows the Episcopal Church to claim the high moral ground – we went as far – and maybe further – as we could go to stay in the conversation with the Anglican Communion. We cannot be said to have failed to take the Windsor Report seriously and I think we could have been considered to have done that if we had not made some kind of response to the “moratorium” request. I wish we had had a response which calls for others in the communion to take seriously the call for mutual listening and for an end to invading diocesan boundaries but time was up.
A sadness for me is that we have lost the traditional assumption within the Episcopal Church that the job of Standing Committees is to ascertain that the canonical requirements have been met in an election. Now we are asking SC’s to judge whether a person, not the process of election, is a challenge to others in the communion. And we are in the business of judging generally, I’ve had people say not entirely in jest to me that people who drive SUV’s or people who are agains the full inclusion of GLBT people are challenging to them so if they were on the SC they would vote against them.
A greater sadness for me is that we spent so much time and got so much press attention for this and for the PB election that many other things we did are obscured:
Before a resolution comes to the floor of convention, it has been worked on by a committee, which has held public hearings as part of its process. Usually there are other vetting stages, for example each resolution is copy edited and checked for canonical issues. And then Dispatch of Business figures out how and when it will come to the floor. There are 22 legislative committees, all of which have the same process, so there is a ton of legislation coming to the floor. In addition, of course, each resolution has to pass in both the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops in the same form. This year’s convention had 9 business days – previous conventions have had two or three more. Committee 26, the Special Committee charged with the Windsor Report response resolutions, had the resolutions which came out of the Special Commission appointed by the Presiding Bishop and President of the House of Deputies plus various resolutions which came from dioceses, bishops and individual deputies. The hope was that they would have presented resolutions for both houses to vote on before the PB election, but that did not take place. They worked and worked and worked and held hearings including a giant hearing with at least 1,500 people. Strong opinions across a spectrum of belief were expressed on the authority of scripture, sexual orientation and behavior, the relationship of the Episcopal Church to the wider Anglican Communion, the meaning and propriety of expressing regret or repentance and so on. If you have strong feelings about this matter, you probably can pretty much guess for yourself what the speeches were like.
And although both houses had passed easier resolutions: regret for straining the bonds of affection with the Anglican communion, commitment to work towards an Anglican covenant, commitment to a listening process, willingness to have DEPO and, of course, money for the Anglican Consultative Council in our budget and commitment to the Millenium Development Goals, it was not until Tuesday that we got a resolution responding to the Windsor Report for a Moratorium. It arrived, and its language was pretty unacceptable to most of the house.
A161 (Anglican Communion: Election of Bishops)
Resolved, the House of Bishops concurring, that the 75th General Convention of the Episcopal Church regrets the extent to which we have, by action and inaction, contributed to strains on communion and caused deep offense to many faithful Anglican Christians as we consented to the consecration of a bishop living openly in a same-gender union. Accordingly, we are obliged to urge nominating committees, electing conventions, Standing Committees, and bishops with jurisdiction to exercise very considerable caution refrain from the nomination, election, consent to, and consecration of bishops whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion; and be it further
Resolved that this General Convention not proceed to develop or authorize Rites for the Blessing of same-sex unions at this time, thereby concurring with the Windsor Report in its exhortation to bishops of the Anglican Communion to honor the Primates’ Pastoral Letter of May 2003; and be it further
Resolved that this General Convention affirm the need to maintain a breadth of responses to situations of pastoral care for gay and lesbian Christians in this Church.
Resolved that this General Convention apologize to those gay and lesbian Episcopalians and their supporters hurt by these decisions.
It seemed too negative and too extreme. The apology at the end appeared gratuitous and unhelpful. For many people, at least for me, the “exercise considerable caution” language would have been much more acceptable. Meanwhile, someone rose to limit the time of debate on the motion and someone else rose to offer an amendment which used the even harsher language of “moratorium”. By the time the house had debated the amendment, there was no time left for a more moderate amendment. We voted the original down. I certainly was not savvy enough to know that in voting against it, I was assuring that there could be no more debate of this matter. There was an effort to reconsider, which I supported, but it did not prevail. This would have meant that the Episcopal Church was refusing to offer any response to the Anglican Communion on the matter of gay bishops, it would mean, as I understood it, just ignoring those in the Communion who had objected in 2003. Then the PB called the combined session, our bishop made it clear that this was our last chance as a house to respond to the WR, which I took to mean, our last chance to remain in the conversation with the Anglican Communion. More than that, our new PB elect, for whom I have huge admiration, asked us to vote for the language of B033, language which I would not otherwise have supported. Also, many respected members of the HOD, including GLBT people and allies said that they would be voting for B033 even though they did not want to. This was more or less what Bp Katharine Jefferts Schori said, assuring the house that this language did not close the door to anyone.
So I voted for B033, even though it went beyond my comfort to appease the larger communion, even though I knew it would be very hurtful to many LGBT people. There was much language at convention about sacrifice, how we in North America must sacrifice for the good of the whole communion. I agreed, however, with Ruth Meyers when she passionately observed that no one can make that sacrifice on behalf of others, straight people cannot ask that sacrifice of gay and lesbian sisters and brothers. But I also believe that as the Anglican Communion unravels, B033 allows the Episcopal Church to claim the high moral ground – we went as far – and maybe further – as we could go to stay in the conversation with the Anglican Communion. We cannot be said to have failed to take the Windsor Report seriously and I think we could have been considered to have done that if we had not made some kind of response to the “moratorium” request. I wish we had had a response which calls for others in the communion to take seriously the call for mutual listening and for an end to invading diocesan boundaries but time was up.
A sadness for me is that we have lost the traditional assumption within the Episcopal Church that the job of Standing Committees is to ascertain that the canonical requirements have been met in an election. Now we are asking SC’s to judge whether a person, not the process of election, is a challenge to others in the communion. And we are in the business of judging generally, I’ve had people say not entirely in jest to me that people who drive SUV’s or people who are agains the full inclusion of GLBT people are challenging to them so if they were on the SC they would vote against them.
A greater sadness for me is that we spent so much time and got so much press attention for this and for the PB election that many other things we did are obscured:
- We adopted MDG’s and called dioceses and individuals to live into them
- We entered into interim Eucharistic sharing with the United Methodist Church
- We expressed the view that the teaching of evolution in the schools was not in conflict with a belief in God as creator and WAS the best scientific thing we could do
- We adopted the Revised Common Lectionary
- We expressed our regret for our complicity as a church in the institution of slavery and called for an investigation of how we might contribute materially to repairing the harm done by slavery
Who else is blogging from GC ?
It is a little late, I guess, to post this, but someone asked who else from MO is blogging from GC and this is what I know:
Mike Kinman, who has done a fabulous job of the Episcopalians for Global Mission presence and hosted a triumphant U2charist blogged a little but got overwhelmed by work. His blog (which is always worth a look) is http://revmikek.blogspot.com/
Trinity CWE member Matthew Owings has been here for the whole time and has been a delightful and intelligent visitor to Missouri deputy gatherings. He has been blogging here
http://gencon2006.blogspot.com/
Kate Ketcham who is the Wash U Campus Ministry Lay Chaplain has been blogging athttp://bluestockingchic.blogspot.com/
I think that my fellow clerical deputy Ron Clingenpeel has been emailing the cathedral listserve daily, but I am not sure.
Non Missouri blogs are: Nick Knisely of the diocese of Bethlehem http://www.entangledstates.org/
the blog of the Diocese of Washington
http://blog.edow.org/weblog/
Sarah Dylan Breuer's blog
http://www.sarahlaughed.net/gracenotes/
She is also the editor of the Witness http://thewitness.org/contents.php
All of these guys have links to other blogs, too. Explore and enjoy. I am planning to write about yesterday later today.
Mike Kinman, who has done a fabulous job of the Episcopalians for Global Mission presence and hosted a triumphant U2charist blogged a little but got overwhelmed by work. His blog (which is always worth a look) is http://revmikek.blogspot.com/
Trinity CWE member Matthew Owings has been here for the whole time and has been a delightful and intelligent visitor to Missouri deputy gatherings. He has been blogging here
http://gencon2006.blogspot.com/
Kate Ketcham who is the Wash U Campus Ministry Lay Chaplain has been blogging athttp://bluestockingchic.blogspot.com/
I think that my fellow clerical deputy Ron Clingenpeel has been emailing the cathedral listserve daily, but I am not sure.
Non Missouri blogs are: Nick Knisely of the diocese of Bethlehem http://www.entangledstates.org/
the blog of the Diocese of Washington
http://blog.edow.org/weblog/
Sarah Dylan Breuer's blog
http://www.sarahlaughed.net/gracenotes/
She is also the editor of the Witness http://thewitness.org/contents.php
All of these guys have links to other blogs, too. Explore and enjoy. I am planning to write about yesterday later today.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Windsor Response, Last Day
It seems to me that the technological aspects of this convention are working less well than at others I have attended. The voting system continues to be so difficult for some deputies that our deputation decided to make the UTO box into a "curse jar" -- covenanting to contribute to it every time we said something negative about the voting process or about the way in which it was being explained to us. And now it appears, when we have big lines at the microphones to speak, that the electronic queuing system doesn't work right, so that the chair doesn't know who is at which microphone and why and who is up next. Anyway, yesterday we got to work in earnest on the Windsor Report Responses. We left at 7:30 Monday night in a fair degree of disarray about A161 which is the one responding to the WR request for a moratorium. Tuesday we voted down A 161. The procedural motions seemed to create a situation in which there was no possibility amending A161 as it came out of the committee to a form more like what came out of the special commission, so the whole thing went down. Today we are having a joint meeting with the bishops and a committee has been working on new wording so despite the fact that the media is already saying things like "US Anglicans defy church" we are still hopeful of offering an acceptable WR response. We did pass two other WR resolutions but 161 is probably the most contentious.
Meanwhile the new title 3 (mainly repairing the too hasty title 3 revision in 2003) passed fairly easily last night, thank goodness.
Meanwhile the new title 3 (mainly repairing the too hasty title 3 revision in 2003) passed fairly easily last night, thank goodness.
Monday, June 19, 2006
Presiding Bishop Election
One of the unforgettable moments about this convention came when the election was announced. It is the custom of the house not to applaud-- especially in situations like this, when a difficult decision has been made which may cause pain to the "losing" side. There were whoops of enthusiasm in the gallery -- which was packed and which was duly admonished. But on the floor you could feel sharp intakes of breath and tears springing to the eyes unbidden. The amazing thing about this election is that even people who thought she was the best candidates thought "but that will never happen" because of her gender and because of some fear that a female primate would just exacerbate the tensions in the Anglican Communion. What was so wonderful -- for many of us-- was that the right thing happened even though we barely dared to hope for it.
Saturday, June 17, 2006
Saturday Already
So, here I am getting ready to go to my legislative committee meeting this morning and I have not posted since the first legislative day. The convention is so intensely covered by the ENS that there is not much that I can add. I have started to post a couple of times, then overwhelmed by sleep have gone to bed without successfully saving my draft. Pretty pathetic. The house of deputies continues to work very slowly. Our electronic voting system seems to be beyond the technical skills of the house, probably because we are too old to know how to program our own VCR's, etc. There seems to me to be quite a lot of unnecessary speech on the floor -- people asking questions or making observations from a microphone which would have been better dealt with in a private way, people saying micro-editing things on the floor, offering views which would have been better done at the hearings, bits of legislation coming to the floor which have to be withdrawn and worked on more. One session caused John to comment that it was like some kind of comedy program. But everyone is playing nicely. Highpoints for me have been: seeing old friends, the PB's forum on reconciliation at which our own John Danforth did a fabulous job and then Dr Jenny ten Paa spoke completely differently and absolutely wonderfully, the liturgies which are wonderfully varied and all extremely well done. Each day there are "visual preludes" displayed on screens. These are lovely slideshows of original art, which also play during communion. I wonder whether some of the triviality on the floor is related to Windsor Report Anxiety -- maybe if we fritter away our time we'll never have to get around to the tough decisions.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
First Legislative Day
Today was the first official day of convention. We got up early, walked up to the convention centre, had a quick fast food breakfast and I went to the Ministry Committee meeting. We are almost done with our task of looking at Canon III:5-9 which is much better than the revision of the equivalent canons in 2003. These canons are about the ordination process of deacons and priests and the life an ministry of priests and deacons. Oddly, although I am not a detail kind of person, I love working on canons and am surprisingly good at finding things which need to be changed or rationalized.
Anyway, after the meeting, we went to Eucharist. The screens were full of slideshows of pictures of artwork. There is a table for the children in the children's program. The choir of Trinity Church Columbus sang -- the were great. The sang early American music -- but not in the styl e of shape note singers, but well. They had a small instrumental ensemble with them which was also wonderful. The organ for the event is a "virtual pipe organ" according to our bulletins.
The first legislative day was mostly a day of ceremonial activities: lovely visit from the Archbishop of York who brought greetings from the Archbishop of Canterbury (which you can read on the Episcopal News Service website.) Messengers go to the House of Bishops to tell them we are all organized and ready, corresponding messengers come from the House of Bishops to tell us that they are ready, too. Greetings from the President of the Episcopal Church women, introductions and where appropriate elections of all the officers of convention and all the people on the dias. Greetings to the representatives of the Church in Liberia who are with us (not sure if this is a first or just that they are not always able to be there.) There was much discussion of the many flags which hang behind the podium. They are a reminder that the Episcopal Church is not JUST the Episcopal Church of the USA but is an international body, including people from Equador and Mexico and Haiti and Cuba and other sovereign nations. At the same time, there is some confusion about the flags. The Haitian flag turns out the be an out of date flag and no one seems to e able to tel lwhich of the flags is from which of the many nations. There is much High Tech about this convention, so we spent some time practicing voting with our little voting devices which look a bit like TV remote controls. We practiced voting "yes " or "no" on an imaginary motion to make cucumber sandwiches the offical food of the Episcopal Church and we practiced election style voting by choosing our favorite hymn out of a list of four. Previous conventions have had electronic voting for "yes" and "no" but I think that this is the first time we are not having paper ballots for elections. For lunch we went to the North Market, just a block or so from the convention centre. This is a delightful place, with some produce -- including Ohio Strawberries and raw buffalo meat-- and lots of prepared take out food. After surveying the scene we opted for the Indian stall, which was tasty and reasonable, even though they did run out of the lamb curry right before I reached the head of the line. Tamsen and I went on a scouting expedition afterwards for tomorrow's lunch options. We also found a wine stall called "the Grapes of Mirth" which is such a great name...
My committee keeps on working. We had a joint hearing with Canons on Title III but hardly anyone came to testify, which either means that all the changes will sail through without any difficulty at all OR it means that people will endlessly argue on the floor things they should have brought up at the committee hearings... We shall see. The schedule is tight -- I dashed from the floor to the diocesan meeting in the Renaissance and back to the convention centre for a hearing. Tiring. Dinner in the hotel, whose real restaurant is under construction. And so to bed.
Anyway, after the meeting, we went to Eucharist. The screens were full of slideshows of pictures of artwork. There is a table for the children in the children's program. The choir of Trinity Church Columbus sang -- the were great. The sang early American music -- but not in the styl e of shape note singers, but well. They had a small instrumental ensemble with them which was also wonderful. The organ for the event is a "virtual pipe organ" according to our bulletins.
The first legislative day was mostly a day of ceremonial activities: lovely visit from the Archbishop of York who brought greetings from the Archbishop of Canterbury (which you can read on the Episcopal News Service website.) Messengers go to the House of Bishops to tell them we are all organized and ready, corresponding messengers come from the House of Bishops to tell us that they are ready, too. Greetings from the President of the Episcopal Church women, introductions and where appropriate elections of all the officers of convention and all the people on the dias. Greetings to the representatives of the Church in Liberia who are with us (not sure if this is a first or just that they are not always able to be there.) There was much discussion of the many flags which hang behind the podium. They are a reminder that the Episcopal Church is not JUST the Episcopal Church of the USA but is an international body, including people from Equador and Mexico and Haiti and Cuba and other sovereign nations. At the same time, there is some confusion about the flags. The Haitian flag turns out the be an out of date flag and no one seems to e able to tel lwhich of the flags is from which of the many nations. There is much High Tech about this convention, so we spent some time practicing voting with our little voting devices which look a bit like TV remote controls. We practiced voting "yes " or "no" on an imaginary motion to make cucumber sandwiches the offical food of the Episcopal Church and we practiced election style voting by choosing our favorite hymn out of a list of four. Previous conventions have had electronic voting for "yes" and "no" but I think that this is the first time we are not having paper ballots for elections. For lunch we went to the North Market, just a block or so from the convention centre. This is a delightful place, with some produce -- including Ohio Strawberries and raw buffalo meat-- and lots of prepared take out food. After surveying the scene we opted for the Indian stall, which was tasty and reasonable, even though they did run out of the lamb curry right before I reached the head of the line. Tamsen and I went on a scouting expedition afterwards for tomorrow's lunch options. We also found a wine stall called "the Grapes of Mirth" which is such a great name...
My committee keeps on working. We had a joint hearing with Canons on Title III but hardly anyone came to testify, which either means that all the changes will sail through without any difficulty at all OR it means that people will endlessly argue on the floor things they should have brought up at the committee hearings... We shall see. The schedule is tight -- I dashed from the floor to the diocesan meeting in the Renaissance and back to the convention centre for a hearing. Tiring. Dinner in the hotel, whose real restaurant is under construction. And so to bed.
Monday, June 12, 2006
General Convention Orientation Day
Well, I have a ton of things to post about Easter and Confirmation but today I am blogging about General Convention. We arrived yesterday evening and settled into our hotel, the Columbus Renaissance. We met for our regular diocesan deputation meeting and social hour Sunday night and then we went to a wonderfully stylish and delicious restaurant featuring "contemporary southern cuisine" called the Brown Stone. Convention gets so busy that we may not manage to eat together again, but this was a delightful evening. Our candid waiter warned against ordering the Creme Brule. I chose not to believe him, but he was right. Otherwise, my dinner (fried chicken with garlic broccoli and roasted asparagus) was perfect.
Today we had room service breakfast because we were so tired from travel, etc. It was okay but probably not worth the extravagance. It might have been worth the extra hour of sleep, however. I went to the organizing meeting of my Legislative Committee, the Ministry Committee (number 14-- apparently there are 22 committees inscrutably numbered 1-26). Our job is to hold hearings for resolutions assigned to us and to bring them to the floor in the best possible form. I am on the subcommittee which is working on revision of Title III, 5-9. The Standing Committee on Ministry Development has worked for three years on this and other resolutions, but we are "another pair of eyes" picking up inconsistencies and trying to make it as clear as possible that the ordination processes for Deacons and Presbyters are parallel. Our committee also has a subcommittee studying new sections of Title III on bishops and their continuing formation, one on the process of reception/ordination of people ordained in other faith traditions and one on "other" resolutions. Tonight we had our first hearing.
Meanwhile, I only had a short time in the exhibit hall but managed to make my first purchase, a lovely scarf with a salt effect wet on wet design AND a lovely celtic border. What more could one want in a scarf! I am thinking that the artist might be able to make us a pottery communion set for Lent.
The afternoon was spent hearing addresses by the Presiding Bishop and President of the House of Bishops and then "deputy orientation" at which I picked up the helpful data about the 22 committees numbered one to 26. The PB talked about matters before us and talked a little about the false dichotomy between "holiness" and "justice", which reminded me of the very helpful essay by Timothy Radcliffe, O.P. about the tension between "kingdom Catholics" and "communion Catholics" in the May issue of the National Catholic Reporter (available online here ). Radcliffe's point (and, I think, Griswold's) is that this is a false dichotomy and that if we listen closely to each other we will discover that we have much in common underneath the surface of our divisions. This is where I found my thoughts going, whether this is what Griswold was saying or not-- kind of like sermons, where what you mean to say is not necessarily what people hear. but it may be what the Spirit means you to hear.
Then there was a "conversation", coordinated by Rob Voyle of the Clergy Leadership Institute which allowed tables of ten, with a trained conversation leader, to discuss what we feel passionately about about being a Christian, based on our life's story, what we love about the Episcopal Church and what we imagine the best outcome of this GC will be --- an appreciative inquiry approach to listening to others, really. not unlike the conversations we had at our diocesan listening sessions. That was quite fun. The people at my table were very charming, although most of us were clergy and generally seemed homogeneous, both demographically and in our thoughts. But I found myself feeling less cynical and more hopeful about the future of the church which was, presumably, the aim of the exercise.
Then off to the social/meeting time at the Renaissance. I decided I'd take the lovely complimentary shuttle, to save time and energy, since I am a fairly slow walker. Turns out the shuttle took longer than even my slow waddling walk would have taken. Then after touching base briefly, back to the convention centre for committee hearings. John came to those and we ended quite early. The two of us went to another delicious restaurant which was having a rack of lamb special (yum, yum, when in doubt, order the lamb is one of my restaurant mottos) and it turned out that Monday is half price wine night. The restaurant was Due Amici, only a block from our hotel. My dinner was so delicious I didn't even ask how John liked his. But it looked rather tasty, chicken marsala on a bed of risotto with green beans. Oh, the lamb had garlic sour cream (or cream cheese?) mashe potatoes and broccolini. John had the gelato sampler, which was also quite good, we both had coffee.
After checking in with Anna who is watching over our house and had a doctor's appointment, we watched the tail end of a documentary about the Blitz on WOSU. And so to bed.
Today we had room service breakfast because we were so tired from travel, etc. It was okay but probably not worth the extravagance. It might have been worth the extra hour of sleep, however. I went to the organizing meeting of my Legislative Committee, the Ministry Committee (number 14-- apparently there are 22 committees inscrutably numbered 1-26). Our job is to hold hearings for resolutions assigned to us and to bring them to the floor in the best possible form. I am on the subcommittee which is working on revision of Title III, 5-9. The Standing Committee on Ministry Development has worked for three years on this and other resolutions, but we are "another pair of eyes" picking up inconsistencies and trying to make it as clear as possible that the ordination processes for Deacons and Presbyters are parallel. Our committee also has a subcommittee studying new sections of Title III on bishops and their continuing formation, one on the process of reception/ordination of people ordained in other faith traditions and one on "other" resolutions. Tonight we had our first hearing.
Meanwhile, I only had a short time in the exhibit hall but managed to make my first purchase, a lovely scarf with a salt effect wet on wet design AND a lovely celtic border. What more could one want in a scarf! I am thinking that the artist might be able to make us a pottery communion set for Lent.
The afternoon was spent hearing addresses by the Presiding Bishop and President of the House of Bishops and then "deputy orientation" at which I picked up the helpful data about the 22 committees numbered one to 26. The PB talked about matters before us and talked a little about the false dichotomy between "holiness" and "justice", which reminded me of the very helpful essay by Timothy Radcliffe, O.P. about the tension between "kingdom Catholics" and "communion Catholics" in the May issue of the National Catholic Reporter (available online here ). Radcliffe's point (and, I think, Griswold's) is that this is a false dichotomy and that if we listen closely to each other we will discover that we have much in common underneath the surface of our divisions. This is where I found my thoughts going, whether this is what Griswold was saying or not-- kind of like sermons, where what you mean to say is not necessarily what people hear. but it may be what the Spirit means you to hear.
Then there was a "conversation", coordinated by Rob Voyle of the Clergy Leadership Institute which allowed tables of ten, with a trained conversation leader, to discuss what we feel passionately about about being a Christian, based on our life's story, what we love about the Episcopal Church and what we imagine the best outcome of this GC will be --- an appreciative inquiry approach to listening to others, really. not unlike the conversations we had at our diocesan listening sessions. That was quite fun. The people at my table were very charming, although most of us were clergy and generally seemed homogeneous, both demographically and in our thoughts. But I found myself feeling less cynical and more hopeful about the future of the church which was, presumably, the aim of the exercise.
Then off to the social/meeting time at the Renaissance. I decided I'd take the lovely complimentary shuttle, to save time and energy, since I am a fairly slow walker. Turns out the shuttle took longer than even my slow waddling walk would have taken. Then after touching base briefly, back to the convention centre for committee hearings. John came to those and we ended quite early. The two of us went to another delicious restaurant which was having a rack of lamb special (yum, yum, when in doubt, order the lamb is one of my restaurant mottos) and it turned out that Monday is half price wine night. The restaurant was Due Amici, only a block from our hotel. My dinner was so delicious I didn't even ask how John liked his. But it looked rather tasty, chicken marsala on a bed of risotto with green beans. Oh, the lamb had garlic sour cream (or cream cheese?) mashe potatoes and broccolini. John had the gelato sampler, which was also quite good, we both had coffee.
After checking in with Anna who is watching over our house and had a doctor's appointment, we watched the tail end of a documentary about the Blitz on WOSU. And so to bed.
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