One advantage to being a “Newbie”, the term applied to first-time Deputies, is that once you get over the disorientation you experience in the first day or two, you learn that you can attend any legislative hearing. Deputies who have been to previous conventions are assigned to committees, and must attend the meetings of those committees, even if the would prefer to attend hearings on the hot-button issues. As a result I have been able to attend the hearings of the World Mission Committee. This is the committee that deals with issues concerning the Episcopal Church’s relationship with the rest of the Anglican Communion. I sat in on the hearing relating to Resolution D025. The language of Resolution D025 could be interpreted as a unilateral lifting of the moratorium on gay bishops. The Deputies on the committee voted 24 to 2 in favor of the resolution while the Bishops on the committee voted 3 to 2 against. Thus when the resolution is presented at the legislative session of the full House of Deputies and the House of Bishops (which could happen either Sunday or Monday) the votes in the committee will be reported. How the Resolution will fare in those houses remains a topic of extended (and heated) discussion. Some analysts of the politics of the Convention believe there are two factors at work that produce the disparity between the Houses. The first is that the membership of the House of Deputies is getter younger, is more disparate and, with 850 members, much more difficult to unify, thus producing a shift in attitude toward the gay community. The second is that Deputies only meet as a body every three years, and unless involved in standing committees or commissions, rarely see each other between Conventions. Bishops, on the other hand meet regularly, and thus forge bonds with one another, a much easier task as there are only about 100 Bishops who can vote. These closer bonds among Bishops, both domestically and internationally, tend to make the Bishops more sensitive to the possibility of a fracture in the Anglican Communion. Because every day’s agenda is similar, I sometimes have to look at the newspaper to remind myself of what day it is. Day seven followed the pattern: legislative committee hearing starting at 7:30 a.m., a legislative session, the daily community Eucharist, a bite of lunch, a session on the Public Narrative project and the another legislative session ending at 6:15 p.m. A respite came in the form of a dinner for the alumni, trustees and staff representatives of The General Theological Seminary. GTS is a creature of the General Convention: trustees of GTS will be elected at one of the forthcoming legislative sessions. I was amazed at how many of the priests attending the dinner had either roots in or strong connections to Long Island The daily Eucharist keeps me going: it is a reminder of the gift of life we celebrate in the Eucharist. I come away feeling refreshed and renewed from every celebration. At each Eucharist a speaker addresses issues important to that speaker and the Convention from a different perspective. Ray Suarez, a senior correspondent for The Nightly News with Jim Lehrer and an Episcopalian, urged us to make ourselves know in the world, to not let the old stereotypes define us, stereotypes such as “Episcopalians are people for whom summer is a verb".
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