After a much better night’s sleep the day began with
breakfast at a great greasy spoon, Hanlon’s, where I had the Irish Eyes- two
eggs over medium served with corned beef hash and potato pancakes. If they had
air conditioning, I don’t think it was on. It was all good. I went in search of
a Starbucks to have coffee for the morning’s work. No such luck. But when I
arrived, some kind and anonymous soul had placed an Odwalla orange juice and
Dayquil cold medicine at my place on the committee table. It was a true
blessing.
We quickly dispatched two other overtures seeking to
re-introduce fidelity and chastity language into the ordination standard. We
were then taken into a discussion on the overtures asking for freedom of
conscience for councils. The motion to disapprove was passed. Freedom of
conscience is a Presbyterian principle for individuals allowing them the right
of dissent. It does not extend councils the right to disobey the will of the
majority as expressed in the constitution. A comment was added to the
disapproval that recognized the fear of some councils that they could be
disciplined for applying fidelity and chastity standard to candidates. One of
the effects of the change in the standards of ordination was NOT to mandate the
ordination of openly gay candidates. What it did do is to require that
ordaining councils take responsibility for discernment of each candidate before
them without creating narrow categories of prerequisites. It’s too easy to
create a checklist without truly engaging the individual candidate before an
ordaining body. Ordered ministry does not fit into the cookie cutter.
We moved on to the overture to allow Presbyteries to set their
own ordination standards. I made to the motion to disapprove. That motion was
sustained, then we broke for lunch. I’m not one of those people who goes
looking for lunch company and am just as happy to eat alone with a book. But
today I found myself with one, and then three lunch companions. Two of them
were members of the committee. The third was a pastor from Memphis named Brian
that I remember meeting during a First Call event in Nashville. We wandered a
bit, but found a great place to eat called Six Penn. Some tasty onion rings
were ordered for the table. Then I ordered a sandwich with banana peppers that
were stuffed with a meatloaf on a brioche roll. It was messy, but very good. We
had to hustle to get back for afternoon session where everyone was eager to get
the remainder of the business done.
We did get it done. Not at the expense of debate, there were
still opinions shared. There were a couple of people who spoke to just about
every issue. Still we moved through the items quickly. I faded at first as my
lunch caught up with me. But then the fog lifted and soon it was time to
conclude our time together with the celebration of the Lord’s Table.
It was so nice to have a free evening and to get away from
the work of the Assembly for a little bit. I got to re-connect with friends
from my long ago days at Carnegie-Mellon University. On the way back from
dinner, my friend Karl took me through the old Squirrel Hill neighborhood where
I lived back in the day. We stopped on the CMU campus. Still looks the same,
though much has changed and expanded. Walking past Margaret-Morrison and the
College of Fine Arts building was a little like stepping back into a nearly
forgotten memory. It’s been a little over 20 years since I was last there and it
took me a long time to reconcile myself to the way that chapter of my life
ended. But tonight it felt okay. I may not have ended up where I hoped I would be
when I was 20. What I know now (that you can’t know at that age) is that we
never really end up where we think we will. We end up where we’re supposed to
be- where God would have us and use us to advance what God is up to in the
world. It can take awhile to come to terms with that, especially when things
don’t go the way we want. It is as true of God’s church as it is with our
individual lives. Sometimes it helps to take the long view when we’re in the
midst of difficult times.
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