Down the home stretch

The air is leaking out of this balloon.

The mood changed overnight at convention. On Wednesday we were crazed, tense, frantic, overwhelmed by the work that lay ahead of us. Overnight, like a cold front moving in after a steamy day, things changed. There was plenty of work to do but suddenly it seemed manageable. We went at it calmly and deliberately.

The exhibit hall closed at 2 p.m., and people have started taking down decorations from their tables in the House of Deputies. People are ready for this one to be over. It’s time to go home.

The big task Thursday was passing a slash-your-wrists budget that represented a cut of $23-million. For several hours in the morning, deputy after deputy approached the microphone moving amendments to restore funding for projects and initiatives close to their hearts. All of them were defeated. It’s a recommendation of the Committee on Program, Budget & Finance that if you restore funds for Project A, you have to show where you’d cut from Project B. Nobody wanted to go there.

The final vote was quiet, almost anticlimactic. Then a deputy rose to request that we pray “for those who are going to get the ax,” i.e., people at the Church Center in New York and elsewhere whose jobs will disappear as a result of the budget cuts we approved. Chaplain Frank Wade stepped to the dais to lead us in prayer. You could feel the mood changing: A few minutes ago the conversation was all about us and how our favorite programs were going to be hurt. Now we realized the victims here are the people at “815,” the church office: program officers, staff, executives. Chaplain Wade asked us to “look into the frightening mirror of the budget and realize our choices have faces.” It’s one thing to zero out a line item. It’s quite another to realize that someone will soon be without a job because you said “Aye!” when the vote was called.

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Deputies this week approved a resolution repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery. This doctrine, which originated with Henry VII in 1496, holds that “Christian sovereigns and their representative explorers could assert dominion and title over non-Christian lands with the full blessing and sanction of the Church.” It gave explorers such as John Cabot and Sir Walter Raleigh the right to claim lands from Native Americans, and the monarchy often referred to those indigenous people as “heathens” and “infidels.”

During the debate, a Native American deputy rose to remark dryly, “I thank Henry VII for discovering me and my people. I don’t know where we would be without him.”

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Sometimes debate drones on as we vehemently agree with each other, and deputy after deputy takes the microphone to say, in effect but at length, “Me too, what the previous speaker said.” Sometimes we take up innocuous resolutions one by one — measures that no one disagrees with. People, this is what the consent agenda is for!  Sometimes it’s just annoying, like being asked to approve a 20-page resolution minutes after it is distributed. I begin to understand the shortcomings of the legislative process: It’s yes/no, up/down, and creates winners and losers. There’s no room here for nuance, for gray area, for both/and. I am feeling slightly more charitable toward the Florida Legislature.

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One day this week our worship service was a paperless Eucharist. No printed program. The words to the hymns were projected on big screens, as were the response to the Prayers of the People. It worked well; everyone seemed to be able to follow along; and it was a gracious and dignified service with Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves of El Camino Real as the celebrant. The preacher was Bishop Steven Charleston, a familiar figure to those who have attended “Believe in a Miracle” in Southwest Florida, who issued a prophetic call to save the planet.

“For years now the environmental movement has told us that there is a clock ticking, a clock ticking, a great organic ecological clock that is ticking away the time of our lives to that when we no longer will be able to reverse the damage that we have done to this planet through our own greed, negligence and ignorance,” said Charleston, assistant bishop of California and provost of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

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Thursday morning I sat in on the House of Bishops. This is a smaller, more collegial group than the deputies. They sit at round tables with a microphone in the center and hold up a big card with their table number when they want to be recognized by the Presiding Bishop to speak. This is much more casual than the 800-plus deputies, who have to line up at microphones to speak.

The bishops were discussing whether retired bishops should be allowed to vote in the House of Bishops. J. Jon Bruno, bishop of Los Angeles, was arguing to let retirees retain their votes, saying, “We shouldn’t emasculate them, or whatever it is for females.” PB Katharine Jefferts Schori stepped right in: “Don’t go there, Jon,” she said. Cue the laughter.

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As convention draws to a close, some people of a conservative bent are feeling ignored and shut out. They think the convention has been one-sided and say that people whose viewpoints have prevailed are doing the victory dance. I’ve been amazed at how some of the national media have overstated what the bishops did Wednesday in passing the resolution urging generous pastoral care for same-sex couples and starting a process of studying the theology of same-sex blessings and collecting examples and drafts to examine at General Convention three years from now. Deputies will get that legislation Friday morning.

“A lot of the anxiety outside this place is reflected in misinformation,” the Presiding Bishop told the House of Bishops on Thursday morning. Some people, she said, are spinning the news in ways that aren’t accurate. “When we go home our job will be to correct the misinformation.” – Judy Stark

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