Early evening skuttlebutt

A friend of mine is supporting Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori of Nevada for presiding bishop. Bishop Schori is generally believed to be an attractive candidate who has no chance of winning because she is a woman. My friend says, half-jokingly, that if everyone who says they plan to vote for her on the first ballot actually does vote for here, she may surprise people.

I meandered in and out of committee meetings and the exhibit hall for most of the afternoon. One person monitoring the Title IV legislation (disciplinary canons that, if passed, would apply to the laity for the first time) said the Canons committee is on the verge of deciding whether to try an extensive last minute edit/rewrite, or to scrap the whole thing. Most of the feedback at the hearings was negative.

The committee dealing with Windsor Report related resolutions apparently hasn’t moved into its new digs yet. I dropped by their hearing this afternoon and found the door jammed with people. Wiggled inside to find every chair occupied, and people lining the walls and sitting on the floor. I’d estimate there were 600 people there. Funny thing is, the committee was talking about a resolution involving letting people from other provinces sit in, but not vote, on our governing committees. This is a resolution that, were it not yoked to the Windsor Report resolutions, wouldn’t draw a crowd large enough to fill my bathroom. Meanwhile there was enough space in some of the other hearing rooms for an impromptu game of polo.

I met Kendall Harmon at the door of one of these empty-ish rooms. He and I have traded friendly emails and not-so-friendly opinions on the Windsor Report, but had never met. Kendall runs the best conservative Episcopal blog, Titus 1:9. I have been wanting to meet him for a long time.

I also ran into Ellen Washington of St. Philip’s Laurel, a South African partnership and Absalom Jones scholarship stalwart in our diocese, who is working as a volunteer; Rev. Randolph Charles, rector of Epiphany, D. C. and an alternate deputy, who said he’d been hearing great support for the Millennium Development Goals all day long; and Darren McCutcheon, alternate deputy from St. Timothy’s. Darren, a high school student, moves into the spotlight tomorrow morning about 7:30 when he will be one of the lead speakers in our diocese’s efforts to have Thurgood Marshall’s name added to the book of Lesser Feasts and Fasts. Say a prayer for him. And say a prayer that I get a decent picture of him.

By the way, if you skip over to the Convention news page on edow.org you will find a few of the pictures I’ve been able to transmit so far.

I am off to our deputation’s nightly meeting, and then on to U2-chairst.

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