Ms Snow addedThe Committee of the Whole was wonderful. I thought it was deeply respectful. People had the opportunity to speak their truth. We had an hour of hearings at Prayerbook, Liturgy and Music (as well as World Mission), the ones on Thursday. Everyone who signed up got to speak. We had huge ballrooms. My sense was that people spoke their truth and did it in a way that was very respectful. Everyone had a chance to speak. People said to me that it wasn’t so hot-button that people didn’t feel they had to drop everything else to pay attention to it. It feels as though there’s a little bit of “What’s going to happen?” but that sense of anxiety that we came to Columbus with and built and built and built … I don’t have that same sense.
There isn’t that same sense because a lot of those people are gone. One thing I liked about the Committee of the Whole was the randomization.
[W]as in line to testify with a piece of blank paper and a pen in her hand, not knowing what to say. She recalled her own experiences as a woman priest who could not serve in one diocese as well as the words of Archbishop of York John Sentamu, who urged members of that Convention to look for signs of crucifixion in themselves. When it came her time to speak, she said, “I cannot and will not be a party to hammering those nails into the hands and feet of my sisters and brothers.”
Following that Convention, she said, she and others knew they “really had to make this different at the next Convention. We need to bring people together and do this in a way that celebrates the relationships we have in the Anglican Communion, which are gifts of the Spirit. So are the steps the Episcopal Church has taken welcoming lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people, which are also gifts of the Spirit.”
“God,” Ms. Meyers said, “is calling us to hold those together.”
Both articles are worth reading.
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