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 The Haitian flag turns out the be an out of date flag and no one seems to e able to tel lwhich of the flags is from which of the many nations.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.