Reflections on General Convention: This is Your Episcopal Life

I don't mean the newspaper Episcopal Life but my own personal life as an Episcopalian which seemed to pass literally before me as I stood in my 10 x 10 foot booth.

Thank God everyone wore name tags, is all I have to say. It often took me some time to piece together names and where I knew people from.

I saw people from Christ Church and Bexley Hall from when I lived in Rochester (1990-1998); lots of people from CDSP (1998-2001); folks from the Diocese of Ohio, including the bishop who confirmed me(1986-1990), and from my brief time as a clergy person in the diocese (2001-2); I saw people from Alameda and the Diocese of California (2002-date); I saw people from CREDO (whenever that was) and job searches (all over the place) and Facebook (all the time) and met people I'd followed via blogs and Twitter (obsessively). That's well over half of my life spent in the Episcopal Church with a whole lot of twists and turns in it.

It was wonderful and unnerving as I stood there, talking about this program that I think is wonderful, doing something I think is good but that is not the thing I expected to be doing. I felt guilty at times as I wondered if I should have done things differently. I was amazed at how strong the feeling was that I Should Be Achieving More. But I also believe I'm where I'm supposed to be at the moment, doing what I'm supposed to be doing. It feels like God is always lurking, always leading in strange and labyrinthine ways. I can't explain. But it was an amazing thing to revisit my life of faith in the Episcopal through many of the people who shaped it. And to understand, or at least catch a glimmer of, how far we are from finished.