Thursday

  • My hotel room is probably a 15 minute walk from the room where the House of Bishops meets--and I walk fast--but it's all in air-conditioned comfort owing to a system of skywalks connecting the convention center to all the nearby hotels (most of which are owned by Marriott, so TEC is helping the LDS balance sheets stay healthy!). 
  • I reported for duty in the HoB just before 8am. One of the quaint formalities is the custom of calling the roll of all living bishops in the order of their consecration. The first half or so of names called belong to retired bishops, most of whom are not present. Hearing the list of names was like an aural palimpsest of my history with the Episcopal Church. Most I knew only as names, not as actual people, but I associated those names with particular twists and turns in the history of this church.
  • Late in the morning it was back to committees. I've written here about my day with Committee 13.
  • Quick lunch with Brenda, Sylvia Little (wife of Bishop Ed Little of Northern Indiana), and Christopher Wells, editor of The Living Church.
  • Back to committees for another two-hour stint.
  • Then back to legislative session, where we actually began to make sausage. 
  • Dinner with Brenda and Sister Sarah Masterson, down here as a volunteer from our old home of Warsaw, Indiana.
  • Brief meeting after dinner with some colleagues who are also potential respondents in a Title IV action, all for doing the same thing, just to swap stories and talk about what we might do and/or say as this process unfolds.

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