General Convention Night One

Well, we left Omaha yesterday, camp in Illinois last night, and arrived in Columbus, OH at 2:00 p.m. local time for the 75th triennial General Convention of the Protestestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. That's a lot of words to say Jodie and I are at the Episcopal Church bidness meeting. Today is also, our second wedding anniversary; so, since Jodie's family lives close to here, they came and took us out to dinner tonight before all this got under way.

I am excited about the number of peopl at the young adult festival (about 150 or so) and the number of young adults here for other reason: volunteers, activists, staff, and even as DEPUTIES!!!! It is great to see people in the their 20s/30s as part of the decision making of the church! It has also been nice to run into old friends and aquaintences. The Episcopal church is a small church; so if you sick around it long enough you run into a lot of the same people.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to an open committee meeting concerning a piece of legislation asking every person, congregation, and diocese to commit 0.7% of thier income towards ministries working on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Their are 8 MDGs that call us to fix major problems in the world. Truly, for the first time in history, abject poverty is solely a political problem. The human race has the ability to feed, clothe, and provide basic medical care for itself. The fact that there are people who live at less than this minimal level is a social/political problem. If we are looking to be reconciled to each other the way we are to God--to love God, neighbor and oursleves in that order--then we should be about organizing our lives, our communities, our states, and our world so that all can have a chance at life. The legislation is about making the call for us to commit our money and ourselves to these goals. You can probably guess that I'm already in favor if it, but I haven't, as of yet, made this type of finanicial commitment. So, after the committee I'll have to swing by the exhibit hall and find some ministries I can support that work in these goals.

Time to sleep!