Cold and Gray (and not just the day)

We’re here, and we’re unclear.

This gray afternoon I ventured out into the cold wind (meteorology as group psychology!) to meet a friend for lunch, who is the assistant to the bishop of one of our conferences.

We ate lasagna at Caleco’s, a St. Louis land-mark, where the “lunch portions” are three times larger than the dinner portions at Paoletti’s.

 I asked her how she was feeling about it. She said, “Sad.” We talked for a while and she recounted how the delegation of which she is apart has not had a meeting since the fall, and even then they didn’t really talk much, or discuss much. They just argued their points.

I told her that I have seen couples who long-ago quit talking and discussing, and anymore were just advancing and defending their point of view. Already ready for the divorce, without fighting to keep what they have.

She said, “I left that meeting last fall thinking, ‘We could have a conference call.’ When I realized that conviction trumps covenant, I knew there was really no point it meeting.”

“A bad divorce,” I said, when there is no resolution, just dissolution. When people haven’t even gone to counseling, or have used the sessions as grinding stones for their particular axe. I just feel like we haven’t talked, really.

Before I left I was made aware, again, of the fact that many UM pastors have not said anything to their people; that many UM people have no idea the General Conference is happening, much less why. That of those who do, more than a few bring preconceptions with them and are not listening to others who may not share their opinions, and certainly not in a spirit of trust and good will.

I reminded her that Ephraim Radner, a conservative Anglican scholar, has claimed that the questions before us have not been settled, because they have not been adequately discussed. They have not been discussed because people are arguing, posturing, but no one is listening.

And I told her that what I felt was missing was the kind of discussion that featured more than a selective reading of the Bible on the one side and a sentimental appeal to experience on the other, but a grappling with texts that takes seriously all of Scripture in light of reason and tradition and experience. (see my “The Way I am Reading," as a very rudimentary experiment in such grappling). And that I wish we could really talk, and not just break it off.

She and I agreed that it is too late for such discussion now, or so it seems. At least at the General Church level. These discussion may have to take place at the local church level, and I hope we can have real discussion. But already, my friend said, she has gotten letters from scores of churches who do not want to talk, among themselves or at all, but are ready to bolt if the vote is anything other than a “traditional” one.

We walked together to the Dome. I asked her why we didn’t go someplace warmer for this Conference. She had asked her bishop. Turns out, because we got the whole convention center for real cheap (because it is off-season, duh) and in hopes of the other revenues that would be generated in hotels and restaurants and such.

I registered. I am a credentialed Observer. Huh? Huh? Pretty good, huh?

I saw a couple of our WNCC delegates, and then ran into Bishop McCleskey. He is retired now, but all bishops are invited to attend these conferences. I asked him how he felt about it. He said, “I don’t know.” He had heard rumors about American percentages and blocks of abstentions and this and that. He is very much for the One Church Plan (see my Pre-Amblings #1), knowing as we all do that it is not perfect, but in hopes of maintaining a united church.

I told him I was not sure I felt good about trusting the future of the Church to the folks I could actually see in the registration area, and we both laughed. God uses all sorts to effect the Divine Will.

We said we would get together for coffee, and I hope we can. He was my District Superintendent when I came into the United Methodist ministry, and made my first appointment. I asked after his wife. “Margaret is great,” he said. “She is at home riding her horse.” He sounded almost wistful.  Or maybe that was just me!

Another of the delegates said she did not know what they (we) were doing tomorrow. It is a

day of Prayer and Preparation, but no one seems quite clear about whether the delegates are to pray at the Dome (where the Conference is being held) or as they are tramming-up the arch (that is where I plan to be!) or one of the local restaurant/watering holes. Or all the above.

February 22, 2019. 5:30 local