Fireworks

The PCNewsHerald arrives, dropped at our door early morning, more convenient than at the house, where I had to walk down the front path, daily risking life and face on the eight concrete steps down and eight back up! My grandfather put hand rails there a hundred years ago, but one rail is long gone. Hurricane Ivan dropped a hickory tree on the other, mashed it useless, but my grandfather put it there and it was staying as long as I owned the house.

If the sprinkler was running in the front yard, then out the back door I'd go, down Calhoun Avenue a block to W. Beach Drive, pick up the PCNH, and back. Tripping on the steps several times but not yet disastrously, I finally painted a white stripe across the top step. But this is better, the condo is safer, and I don’t wonder uneasily if another bear has swum across the Bay from Tyndall to wander the neighborhood and perhaps charge me from the shadows. Besides, Daisy isn't the only green light, from here I see half a dozen or more instead of just The One.

As I’ve confessed before, I cannot read, I'm as illiterate as St. Peter (Acts 4:13), Linda reads the PCNH and works the pussword crawzzle. I look at the pictures, for years I read the comics every day until they started stacking up, now I only read Sunday comics. If there’s something interesting, Linda hands me the paper, like yesterday. 

I’m an admirer of Mike Cazalas, PCNH Editor, don’t always agree with him, but Mike is a single parent who evidently dotes on his son and from time to time writes a column about some adventure they’ve had together, making me long for my distant yesterdays when Joe, Nicholas, and Ray were little. We watched the fireworks from our balcony porch last evening, 

nice, but what it brought to mind was Fourths of July in Apalachicola, watching fireworks at Battery Park with Nicholas.

In “Viewpoints” yesterday, Saturday, Mike ran dual columns, aptly headed “From the Left” and “From the Right,” about SCOTUS on gay marriage. This returns to mind because General Convention, national legislative body of our church, this week legalized our bishops letting priests officiate gay marriage. Before that, it was “blessing” not "marriage" though ambiguous. Now it’s “marriage.” Holy Matrimony.

General Convention likes to be the cutting edge. In my youth, up until middle age, I used to become enraged by acts, resolutions and pronouncements of General Convention. I mean, an alphabet heart attack every time they gathered for their triennial fraternity meet. They go, and think they run the church, but the church is lived and run locally, congregationally. In my life, they hardly ever changed our parish life out in the boondocks. A new prayerbook in 1976/79 and a new hymnal in 1982 but that was it. And then, after I was ordained priest and we accepted the call from Pennsylvania to Apalachicola, something was said that was my wake up. In a meeting once at Trinity Church, it may have been a vestry meeting, I commented on something and a woman present, a leader in the parish who is still a friend, said, “Father Weller, we don’t care about General Convention here.” She said, This is our church, we pay no attention to General Convention, they don’t affect us.

Yep. “Episcopal” means ruled by bishops, but at the grassroots we are congregational, directed by elected vestry and rector, where our pastoral friend the bishop comes to visit once a year, helping us remember we are Anglican, Episcopalians. But of General Convention, any Episcopalian can give the brush off, “We ain’t stud’n you.”

Woops, I dropped the reins and the horse wandered, my subject was the PCNH. Yesterday I read the two columns that Mike printed about gay marriage. “From the Left,” Jim Hightower’s column was reasonable if bitter, even if he did get into calling names his position is clear and from his life experience. Jonah Goldberg “From the Right,” was singularly incisive, even if I didn’t care for his cynical undertone. “You can’t compromise with culture warriors,” was his theme, starting out remembering reading “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” to his daughter when she was little. If you give a mouse a cookie, the mouse wants a glass of milk, then the mouse wants a straw, then the mouse wants ... It reminded me of something I heard years ago about communists taking over half a country, “North Korea” and “North Vietnam” and other divided places: never done, once they get half, they starting maneuvering to get half of your half. And so forth and so on. 

Over the years I watched exactly that with General Convention, to my consternation way back when I allowed them to consternate me, which they no longer do. The culture war. I recall once, years ago, they voted on an issue, a resolution, and the traditional vote had a substantial majority. So that was decided, all settled and done, right? No, wait. Sometime during the next year, the issue was raised again, and I read the Presiding Bishop’s words, “The church has not settled that, it’s a work in process.” Say what?

No, he was correct, the PB was right, it was not settled. Over the next three, six and nine years the issue was brought up again and again, the voting margin shrinking and shrinking and shrinking until the warriors had their victory, and then it was settled. 

It’s the way of life, human life. If we don’t like what is, we keep at it until it is what we like. Then it’s settled. Like any church-wide meeting of any sect or denomination, our folks who go to General Convention are simply people from across America, bringing their hearts.

This morning in Sunday School we'll invite folks to discuss the actions, decisions, resolutions of General Convention 2015.

TW+