Yesterday was wonderful, exhausting, glorious, and hard--all at once.
We began with an amazing worship service. The Rev. Mary Crist preached an terrific sermon. She told of her parish's story of starting and following wherever the Holy Spirit led. No pay, no building, no congregation. Just God. Yet they flourished. At the end she said, "It's exhilarating. It's unpredictable. It is messy...yet it is God...and it is good."
The whole day was exhilarating and unpredictable and messy but also holy and good.
The bishops talked about not requiring the Presiding Bishop to resign as a diocesan bishop, but decided to wait to act until we see the Structure piece. Our afternoon focused on a Trial use of a Blessing for same sex couples. It was a holy debate. The measure passed easily. My sense is that we currently have a kind of liturgical anarchy about rites of blessings. Dioceses use all kinds of rites. This will regularize them and enable us as a Church to see if this rite works. It's a trial use for the Church to gather information.
General Convention is such a strange way to run a Church. My hope is that in our reform we will do much less business but do it well. I think our decisions afford a lot of input but not enough reflection. I know that after a week of being here, I am tired and not able to think as clearly as this work demands.
The other strong sense is that we have not gotten to the real work which is to make way for the future Church. We don't exactly know how to let go and what to let go. So we talk about reform without getting there.
I think it's because the task is not the details but the vision. Once the vision is clear, the needed structure will also get clear but not the other way around. What is clear is that we cannot do business like this again--but I do not know if we are capable of letting it go. It is cumbersome and expensive and not thoughtful enough. However, for reasons I can't quite fathom, this way of doing General Convention has hold of us and is less of an anchor than a 9 day weight.
The Structure Committee reports out soon. We'll see where they start.
+Porter
