Monday afternoon & evening; Day 1 - 6/12

Monday, June 12; 12:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Tried to go to the 12:30 hearing about funding priorities held by Program, Budget and Finance (PB&F). The room was too full. There is a lot of energy around the Millennium Development Goals.

The whole Convention gathered this afternoon at 2:00 to hear the opening addresses of Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold and House of Deputies President George Werner.

Bishop Griswold said that it will be our inner grounding and attitude which will shape the decisions of the Convention. If our inner landscape is anxious and fearful, it will produce disorder; if we are at peace within, our work will be ordered. He said that he has great trust in the Holy Spirit, the people and the process of General Convention.

Much of his talk centered around the topic of reconciliation, grounded in the costly reconciliation of Jesus. The truth we seek is larger than any one particular view. And though Christ's truth is unfathomable, the Holy Spirit reveals to us more and more of the divine purpose. Seeking the truth is a communal exercise. He mentioned that God's ways, according to scripture, are both straight and crooked. We risk idolatry if we worship an image of the church which becomes an end in itself.

He spoke of the dual claims of the church's character as a call for holiness and a call to be an agent for justice. That is not an either/or dilemma. Both holiness and justice are aspects of God. Our origins ground us both in the zeal of the Reformation and the continuity of Catholicism. We know the Lord both through the Book and the Sacrament. Christ calls us to "Come and Grow." (that is the theme of the Convention)

The Body can't be whole without distinctions. The Body ceases to be whole when one part says to another, "I have no need of you." Archbishop Rowan Williams has said that in "baptism we are caught up in solidarities not of our own choosing." We are called to live in the mystery of communion for the sake of love. It is all about love, said the Presiding Bishop.

Bishop Griswold included in his talk one of his favorite quotes from Thomas Merton: "If I allow Christ to use my heart in order to love my brothers and sisters with it, I will soon find that Christ, loving in me and through me, has brought to light Christ in my brothers and sisters. And, I will find that the love of Christ in my brothers and sisters, loving me in return, has drawn forth the image and the reality of Christ in my own soul." This is the vision that affirms that we our brothers and sisters. We have no other option.
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President George Werner started with a story about Robert Louis Stevenson. When Stevenson was a little child, he was up in his room looking out over the night. His mother called, "Robert, are you okay? What are you doing?" Just then the lamplighter was coming down the street doing his evening work. "I am watching someone punch holes in the darkness," replied the child.

St. John's prologue says that Jesus is the true light which explodes into the world, that the darkness cannot understand. Too often we fear the darkness to much and try to protect the light instead of taking the light out into the darkness.

Werner said that we do not ask another to walk with me until you understand that I am right, but rather we walk together.
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The House of Deputies then had a directed session of deputy conversation. We began with two quotes:
The first quote was from a sermon the Sunday after 9-11: "The challenge of this life is not to stay alive, rather the challenge of this life is to stay in love." Chris Rankin-Williams, 9/16/01
"What I see is not what I am looking at, but what I am looking with. And so my first and principal duty... is to find my eyes of love."

We did a meditation focusing on the pulse of our hearts. What makes our heart pulse? That which is in you gives you life unconditionally.

We sat at tables of ten persons and responded to three questions. (I didn't copy these, so this is a paraphrase. It was a past, present and future exercise.)
1. From your background and origins, what do you love most about the Episcopal Church? How have you experienced God's love in the church?
2. Where is your passion for the church?
3. What would you see as success for this General Convention? What could you tell people years from now we accomplished with God's help in this Convention?

My own answer had to do with the experience of the unqualified love of God as a child growing up in a church that was a safe place of belonging for me. And I spoke of the leadership of the rector of my church during the civil rights days. That planted a passion for the church's mission to bring goodness to the world. And my hope is for us to be a Convention that manifests God's unqualified love with such passion that we can be a broad container for people from all of the margins.
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After a two hour break, we had committee meetings tonight. Friendly encouragement from our open hearings on some of the work we'll be sending up.

It's been a full day. Hard to squeeze in food. I grabbed a muffin and fruit before the early committee meetings. I missed a lunch invitation and grabbed Greek fast food. Tonight I had to leave before the food came to the table, so a colleague boxed up my sandwich and left it in front of my door. Got to pay more attention to food.

Lowell