Hello from San Jose, CA! I'm spending the week at the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s biennial General Assembly and I've been thinking for a couple of days now of the best analogy for it. Many of you who know much about church in general is that the degrees of separation between churchfolk has got to be less than 10. I am convinced, however, that in the PC(U.S.A.) it's more like...two.
Along those lines, I've decided the most appropriate analogy for G.A. is a family reunion. This idea first came to me when I began running into friends, colleagues, and people I admire in the denomination that I haven't seen in a long while, most since the last assembly I attended in 2004. Yet the idea became even more clear when I ran into others, people with whom I have had, shall we say, "words," people with whom I do not see eye-to-eye with regards to diversity issues, theology, or any of the other multitude of issues that seem to divide us.
See, at your family reunion there are the long-lost cousins, aunts and uncles, and nieces and nephews. You hear about their achievements, their triumphs and losses through the grapevine. But when you finally see them, you celebrate in person, you hug and show your excitement to reconnect despite the distance and the time. But, at your family reunion, there is also the person with whom you disagree on nearly every issue and who takes the time to make that known. You avoid them when possible or appropriate, but at family reunions there is little room or time for that. Family reunions are where all our guts and passion and mistakes and love get strewn out across the table and we are called to defend them, sometimes vehemently and sometimes meekly. Family reunions are where fights happen, destructive, divisive fights. But, and this is so important to remember, family reunions are where healing can begin. They are where love can conquer when we take time to listen. See the word in there that's key: "reunion"?
Signing off for the night with a heart broken for the Church,
Megan
