William White and General Convention

I'm home at last. As you may have guessed from the paucity of entries, the last couple of days were brutal. The exhibit hall opened at 8:00 am Wednesday and Thursday. On Thursday when the hall closed, a ragged cheer went up from the exhausted exhibitors, followed almost instantaneously by the sound of forklifts rambling through the hall as we all packed up our stalls.


We were out of there in 45 minutes, tops, walking out the back of the exhibit hall into a large square of light while behind us the sound of packing tape unrolling echoed throughout the room.

Today was the final day of convention and appropriately it is the feast day of William White who was the first Presiding Bishop (and the fourth, actually) of The Episcopal Church. I don't have all the facts at my fingertips right now, so forgive me if this is inaccurate, but he helped establish the system we have in our church whereby laity and clergy other than bishops have a voice and a vote at our General Conventions. This is still a novelty in the Anglican Communion as was clear in Bonnie Anderson's meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury that I mentioned in an earlier post.

High marks to William White who didn't allow a pursuit of personal power to control him. Our church is better for it.

More in days to come.