Wednesday

The grind has begun, and it's still in the "gentle" phase.

 My morning began (and continued ... and ended) with a meeting of Committee 12: Prayer Book, Liturgy, & Music. We heard testimony (mostly on the resolution to include the Dorchester Chaplains in Lesser Feasts & Fasts), talked amongst ourselves in plenary, and worked in subcommittees. I found myself (no surprise) taking a fairly active role in the consideration of what to do with the sanctoral calendar. (See here for more substantive observations.)

 After a fairly brief time to grab some lunch (which Brenda and I did in the exhibit hall concession area), the Bishops and Deputies gathered in the House of Deputies chamber to hear homily-like non-homilies from the Presiding Bishop and the President of the House of Deputies, followed by actual non-homilies from the Secretary of the General Convention Office, the Bishop of Texas, and the President of the Episcopal Church Women.

 We then gathered in our respective chambers for "orientation." This is mostly old information about rules and procedures and the operation of our dedicated iPads that we tedious for everyone, but probably necessary.

 At 5:15 there was a quasi-liturgical gathering in the convention worship space focused on stories emanating from the #MeToo movement. A selection of personal narratives had been selected from a batch that had been solicited and submitted, stories of events that no one wants to imagine actually happen in church communities, but yet they do. t was intended as a time of lament and repentance. 

 At around 7:00 I grabbed dinner with Brenda at a nearby TexMex place. Afterward, we came back to our room, where I worked on my other blog (see link above). Then I headed over to another hotel to pow-wow with the other Communion Partner bishops. There is precious little strategizing left to do; we have no actual power, and are at the mercy of the convention. The scenarios we contemplate are various degrees of "bad" and "worse." We try not to lose heart.

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