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.