Our deputation meets in the room adjacent to deputation chair the Rev. Frank Wade’s hotel room. The room is always packed because everyone from the diocese who attends the convention is invited. Tonight, at one point, there were 28 people in the room and others standing in the hall. We are monitoring a number of committees. The biggest news I heard that I haven’t reported elsewhere on the blog concerned the disciplinary canons contained in the rewrite of Title IV. The committee hearing testimony on those canons closed its hearing after an hour, and went into executive session. I can’t imagine an 11th hour rewrite of such complex legislation can succeed. People won’t have time to examine it carefully, and they won’t believe that the committee could transform it overnight. So my bet is that it won’t make it to the floor.
After the meeting, I headed to the U2charist. It was packed. I’d estimate that there were at least 500 people in the Renaissance Hotel ballroom, and I counted more than 100 in the doorways and in the hall.
Mary Dail from Trinity Upper Marlboro, Iris Harris and Darren McCutchen from St. Timothy’s and the Revs. Randolph Charles (Epiphany, DC), Karla Woggon (St. Andrew’s) and Preston Hannibal, canon for academic ministries, were on hand Preston and Karla even found a seat. The rest of us milled about, or sat in the hallway.
Bishop Michael Curry of North Carolina preached a rousing sermon, but I couldn’t really hear it, having surrendered my seat inside after I finished taking pictures. Look for them eventually over on edow.org
The U2charist, like the Overseas Bishops’ Dinner, is an event I am going to need a little bit of time to digest. I can say, though, that there was tremendous energy in the ballroom, and a healthy minority of the crowd was currently young, as opposed to the many U2 fans who are previously young.
The Millennium Development Goals are becoming a real focal point for our Church. I support them. But I am not sure we’ve done the hard work of rallying support among our rank and file. (Excuse the labor lingo, but I was born and raised in coal country.) We are on the verge of passing legislation here that will force dioceses to make some tough choices regarding our domestic mission at their next conventions. We will be asking them to devote $70,000 of every $1 million toward the MDGs. That money has to come from somewhere, and my hope is that we don’t take it from poor people in one place to give it to poor people in another.