a revolutionary church

I regret that I haven't taken the time to write the past few days, but truly, I have been so emotionally overwhelmed that I have retreated inward. I have not had a single inclination to share. Time to overcome that and start working on a way to give people back at home some insight into the General Convention experience.

On the whole, what I can say about General Convention and the style of discourse that has occurred here is that it is a model for members of faith communities - and for other legislatures. It has been painstaking and occasionally contentious, but more often than not, it has been marked by a sincere attention to the validity of everyone's own spiritual journey, and own work to discern the Spirit in their lives. It has been marked by deep Christian love - transformative and renewing.

I will return home to the Diocese of Lexington with enthusiasm for a meaningful dialogical process we used at Convention. Since Provincial Synods (and in the planning stages for months prior), there has been an initiative afoot to help deputies, bishops, members of the ECW, and other participants learn to listen and hear deeply. Through Public Narrative (www.publicnarrative.org), we utilized a mission-focused loose rubric for storytelling and dialogue to help us learn about and from each other, and find common threads that bind together our stories and our live and call us to go out into the world and do mission work. The process was very reflective, contemplative, and interactive; it called forth stories of joy, stories of pain, stories of trial and error, experiment and discovery, exclusion and ostracism and the healing power of inclusion.

Austin, one of my fellow deputies from Lexington, mentioned tonight the constant problem we encounter when facing conflict - within and without the Church. We - Episcopalians and human beings, period - have not learned to talk and listen, and be in loving conversation with each other prior to conflict. Because we neglect this important aspect of relationship building, when conflict arises, we turn to pointing fingers, throwing dangers, and demonization. Any dialogue that starts at that point is tinged with a highly emotional and anger-filled atmosphere, and healing can't start. If we don't know each other before anger explodes, then there is almost no hope once it starts. It just brews.

The three year hiatus between 2006 GC and 2009 has been a period of healing - for the most part. There have been divorces within our church, and there has been the constant threat from the fundamentalist elements within our Anglican Communion to "kick us out" or be in impaired relationship with us. The utter confusion of most of our Anglican counterparts as to our Episcopal polity (democratic governance within a church? quoi?) has come to the forefront. In a Communion where bishops hold most of the power and make the decisions for their churches, where the national experiences are so wholly different as to make the American experience inexplicable and alien, and where progressive Christian scholarship has opened up new understandings of scripture, doctrine, and Christian history - we are a strange strange strange Church. We are a beautiful church, rich in diversity, unafraid of engaging with scholarship and modernity. This is different from the experiences of many of our Anglican brothers and sisters. In the Episcopal Church, as an elected deputy, this 22-year-old female has a vote that equals that of her bishop. How radical! How new! How true to the way the Spirit has moved in the American experience, exposing the cruelties of the lack of representation and the evils of exclusion.

The Episcopal Church was the post-Revolution church in the newly constituted United States of America, and acting upon the wisdom of the founders of this country, the founders of this Church maintained a representative, democratically elected bicameral legislature for the government of the Church. No longer would laity have no voice, would priests and bishops dictate without the blessing of their congregants. This church would NOT be a theocracy. This church would protect the dignity of each of its members - and this has been the onward revolutionary march from our creation to the present day, the constant renewal of our identity to fully respect and honor the dignity of all people. It has taken us centuries

We are living into our constitution and continually discerning the way forward. We were the church of the Revolution; today we are a revolutionary church.