I am taking a little time off this morning to recoup. My committee (Ministry) met, though, to finish our business and hold hearings on two last resolutions that came to us--one about cleaning up canonical language and one about dioceses in a transition between bishops and pastoral care for clergy and congregations in that situation.
Our Church is so diverse--we have dioceses with less than two dozen congregations and dioceses with more than two hundred. Somehow the challenge is to listen to each other, to try to do ministry in these different contexts and, in the context of Convention, to craft laws and resolutions that will bind us together across such diversitites. Sometimes we manage better than other times--and too often the "middle" makes it so that the smallest or most innovative dioceses are isolated. Since I came from one of our smallest and now minister in one of the largest, I have a unique vision, though not a singlar one. I do love this church.
Caught up on a very little of the news that's being reported in the wider world about us. Actually, we haven't moved quite as far as they say, though we also haven't gone back. The secualr press has trouble with nuance. And nuance makes bad headlines. "Episcopal Church affirms its identity and practice" wouldn't sell papers.
We are rushing to get legislation through and onto the floor--we've been a little constipated by arguments over what seem like small things to some but big deals to others. Trying to keep good relationships while getting some things done is always the challenge of convention. A friend on the World Mission legislative committee (the one that had all the hard resolutions) reports that the committee was wonderful and transformative. That's good news. And my own committee functioned really well and worked hard. Makes it worth doing.
Now I'm bemoaning the fact that I've come all the way to Anaheim and will not even get to Disneyland. Oh, well.
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