Views from the Frontier

Mountain Echo, September 2003

by Gina Logan
Like a number of other writers in this issue of the Mountain Echo, I’ve recently returned from Minneapolis, where I participated in the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. Unlike your other correspondents, however, I wasn’t a deputy nor a journalist nor even an observer or visitor. I was a worker bee, removed from the action, sequestered in a makeshift office, attached to a computer, doing text editing of the various resolutions and other materials that flowed back and forth between the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops.

A lot of words washed over me in the two weeks I spent in an over-air-conditioned room, my eyes flicking between hard copy and computer screen, my red pen moving across the printed page, my fingers tapping at the keyboard. Some of those words made my heart sing, and some made it heavy, but other people have written about that. I want to tell you something else altogether about those two weeks in Minneapolis.

This was my first General Convention, and it turned out to be a historic one. (Is there something about Minneapolis? And will we ever go back for Minneapolis III?) But I found myself focusing, not on the controversies and issues that faced our Church, but on its unity and strength, which were manifested powerfully and daily in that huge Convention Center and in the streets of the city, too, because wherever I went, there we were—Episcopalians everywhere, lay and clergy, men, women, elders, young people, all races and ethnicities, all of us together.

And, regardless of our political or cultural differences, when we encountered one another on the street or in a restaurant or buying toothpaste in Target, we smiled at each other. It felt—and this was strange, for there was usually no physical contact in these encounters—it felt to me the same way that it feels when we give each other the Peace, when we turn to our sisters and brothers during Eucharist with a handshake or a hug. I realized that we were all pilgrims on the same road, and though we might have different ideas about the meaning of our journey, or about the way we should do our journeying, we were part of the same company, walking our various paths in the light of the same guiding Love, sheltered by the same generous Spirit.
And the Sunday Eucharist at Convention evoked this feeling of holy companionship even more powerfully. Over six thousand people prayed, sang, and were fed at God’s table (well, actually at a large number of tables—there were over a dozen communion stations). Five thousand of us prayed for peace, for strength, for guidance, for an end to division and strife, for healing, for balance, for all the gifts that God alone can give—and for the grace to recognize those gifts when they actually come our way. I think that’s the key: being aware that what we get may be cloaked in some other garb than we expect.

So what did we get, at this General Convention? Some pain, some joy. Some grief, some rejoicing. But all of it was shared. That was the most powerful part of this endeavor, for me. No one gloated, no one made fun, no one acted ungenerously. We were all together, in our sorrow or in our elation. We were, and are, pilgrims on the same road.

I pray that we will continue to walk together, no matter what our disagreements or disputes might be. For no matter how much we might wish that things had gone otherwise, events fell out as they fell, and we are still here. We are still here, with the God who made us and cares for us. With God’s help, and walking in God’s holy presence, we can and will continue to be the Church, one, holy, catholic and apostolic. Amen.

Gina Logan is a member of St. Mary's, Northfield.

Return to General Convention Articles Index Page